


The Duel of the Fates

by sigo



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Badass Rey, Bottom Armitage Hux, Bottom Kylo Ren, Chancellor Armitage Hux, Duel of the Fates Script Based, Force Dyad (Star Wars), Happy Ending, Heavily Kylux, Jedi Finn (Star Wars), M/M, Minor Rey/Rose Tico, Not Canon Compliant - Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Phasma Lives, Plot With Porn, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rey (Star Wars) is Nobody, Rey is Not a Palpatine, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, That's Not How The Force Works, The smut is Kylux, Top Armitage Hux, Top Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:41:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 31,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24378886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sigo/pseuds/sigo
Summary: Hux’s datapad chimed again, a call from Kuat this time, and he sighed aloud at it, exasperated. “What?” Hux leaned back in his chair, eyeing the holographic figure seated across from him, the shadowy form of their TIE cockpit barely visible around their body, the entire image emitted from the steel inlay in the far wall that Hux used to transmit his speeches. Hux carelessly knocked over a good half of the physical chess pieces in front of him, putting his bare feet up on his desk. His projected guest scowled at him. But Hux paled at the words that met his ears through his datapad. 'Jedi are with the rebel group that bombed the fueling station...the girl is here.' He ended the call without a goodbye, returning to the other conversation he’d been having, up until this point quite pleasant. “Ren.”// This is a TROS fix-it based off the DOTF script leak. It does not follow all events in the leaked script.
Relationships: Armitage Hux/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren, Poe Dameron & Finn, Poe Dameron/Finn
Comments: 4
Kudos: 49





	1. The Place is Within

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! If you've read Mortis, that was an excerpt of one of the sex scenes from this fic. This is like that but not just Hux/Kylo. It contains more Kylux scenes as well as the rest of the story, featuring our beloved good guys. Not beta'd, mistakes are mine.

Episode IX, The Duel of the Fates

The iron grip of the First Order has spread to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. Only a few scattered planets remain unoccupied. Treason is punishable by death. Determined to suffocate growing unrest, Supreme Leader KYLO REN has silenced all communication between neighboring systems with a transmissions blockade. The Resistance, led by General LEIA ORGANA and Jedi Knights REY and FINN, has enacted a plan to prevent their annihilation and forge the path to freedom….

  
  


High in the orbital ring above Kuat, a First Order transport docked in one of the orbiter’s bays, on schedule and with no reported anomalies. A graphite BB unit exited the transport, rolling away across the docking bay. It swerved around droids and white-shelled troopers and officers in their crisp black uniforms, headed down a long hall. A mouse droid whirred by, scuffing its paint and chirping something rather rude at the larger droid. The BB droid tilted its head down, looking at the scuff and the orange peeking through, and burbled an uh-oh before continuing on its way.

Down below on Kuat’s surface, Rose Tico grabbed her blinking comms device with gloved hands. “BB-8, status report. You in?” BB-8 beeped an affirmative. Rose looked up through a hole between swathes of fabric in the canvas roof of the shanty she’d inhabited far too long now, at the distant orbital ring in the sky above, and the star destroyers protruding from it like spikes on a pit-beast’s choke chain. “I need to see the checkpoint to get our guys through. Get me the camera feed, okay?”

Above, BB-8 plugged in to a terminal, his form tense.

“Atta boy,” Rose murmured as her holoscreen lit up, a grid of points blurring and scrambling. She strapped a pair of yellow bug-eyed goggles onto her head to read it, the images unscrambling to reveal the security checkpoint. She blinked, zooming in on an approaching dropship. “Here they come.”

The First Order shuttle approached the checkpoint, touching down on the pale soil and kicking up silver dust. Stormtroopers overlooked the throng of migrant workers spilling out of the ship. All species, ragged and hungry, submitting to the Order in exchange for the safety of a militarized zone and the scraps of food that come with fuel miner’s work. The migrants were funneled into a bottleneck ending in a slim white weapons detector, the inside of it a grid of red lasers. Among them, two human men in drab robes and dusty headwear.

“Checkpoint, keep your head down,” Finn whispered to the figure next to him. Poe nodded. Sentients barked at each other in a hundred languages as they were pushed together into tighter and tighter lines. A Drovian with limbs like tree trunks shoved Finn. “Hey man, no trouble here,” Finn said, and was promptly hoisted up by the front of his robe. The Drovian met his face with bared teeth. “Trouble -- Poe,” Finn squeaked, “Trouble!”

Poe stepped up to his side, tapping the Drovian’s midsection. Poe offered a dried three-eyed Peckto fish from his leather rations pouch beneath his robe. “Easy, easy there. Here, you want this? I couldn’t finish it.” The Drovian dropped Finn, the fish an infinitely more enticing prize.

“Thanks,” said Finn. They shared a tense look as they moved toward the scanner. There were more than leather pouches with dried goods beneath their disguises. They each held a concealed blaster, and Finn the lightsaber he’d constructed under Luke’s direction. “How will we know if Rose and BB rewired this thing?”

The weapons detector alarmed suddenly, set off by a mangy Gotal. The unfortunate soul pleaded with the stormtroopers that dragged him aside, pointing to his metal horns, but was promptly shot against the wall.

“Guess not,” Poe said shakily.

Finn and Poe stepped into the weapons detector together, Finn squeezing his eyes shut. The machine flared, shuddered, and clicked off, going dark. The moderated voice of a trooper. “We lost power. Hold the line.” The same group of stormtroopers that had dispatched the Gotal stepped in front of the exit, blasters still smoking. Poe’s hand reached forward and found Finn’s, squeezing tight. The stormtrooper who had ordered the halt cursed and smacked the console of the detector. It powered up again. No alarm. “Go on, get moving,” the trooper ordered.

Finn and Poe passed through the border wall into the vast Kuat Migrant Settlement. The worn modular housing boasted a wealth of colors and patterns, painted with scenes and symbols from home planets lightyears away. At the center of the settlement, a massive fuel shaft glowed blue, reaching from the core of the planet to the orbital ring above, transporting the destroyer-powering energy mined here to the ships above.

A human man, aging and scruffy, glared out at them from a machine shop, and then itched his left cheek and turned, walking away into the gloom of his shop. “That’s our guy,” Poe said, tapping Finn’s arm. “Wedge.” Poe and Finn entered the dark shop and the attached hut, unaware of the black-hooded figure that watched them.

The hut was small and cluttered, as they all tended to be, hardly any separation between Wedge’s work and his family, perched on furniture with wane, sullen faces. Poe unhooked his two leather bags from his belt, handing them over to Wedge. Payment. Rose emerged from the beaded curtain in the back of the hut. “You said two days, I’ve been here two weeks.”

“This place doesn’t seem so bad,” Finn told her amiably.

“Great people, at least. Terrible rations,” Rose grinned. The table was yet clear, so she unrolled her canvas map onto it. “This is our access point.” She carefully set an aqua crystalline holochip down on the center of the map. It glowed and projected the orbital ring and the fuel shaft which plunged from the stars into the planet’s core. “Right,” she said decisively, “a detonation directly into the energy stream, here, will take the whole thing down.”

Finn looked up through the patchy tarp roof at the dozen star destroyers fueling up on the ring. “The fuel shaft _and_ their new fleet.”

“Come on, let’s do this now,” Poe said, on edge, “before they detect BB-8’s signature.”

“Yeah,” Finn agreed. “Let’s blow this thing up and go home.”

Together the three of them moved through the throng of migrant workers toward the base of the fuel shaft. None of them saw the figure following in their wake, as dark and soundless as shadow.

“BB-8?” Poe spoke into the communicator on his wrist. “Yeah we’re alive buddy. I’m glad to hear from you too. Unlock the base doors and get a shuttle ready. Meet us at the extraction point. You remember it?” An affirmative beep came through Poe’s comms unit.

A trio of troopers guarded the archway into the base of the structure, but Poe made short work of them with an electric shock-pod. He handed two more grenades to Finn and Rose, these ones yellow rather than green, as they stood together gazing up at the shuddering particle energy running up the cylinder in front of them, dwarfing them.

“Twenty seconds to detonation, give or take,” Poe said.

“Give or take how long?” Rose asked.

“Nice and easy,” Poe said.

“I’m going to need more detai-- _Oh now?!_ ” Finn gasped, fumbling to activate his grenade as Poe tossed his own into the stream. The three pods rocketed upwards in the particle flow.

Poe spoke into his comms unit, holding it up to his face as they turned and ran. “Bombs away. Got a ship? That’s my boy!” They exited the base and found themselves facing a platoon of stormtroopers.

“Drop your weapons!” The platoon leader demanded. Civilians craned their necks behind the troopers, trying to get a look at the would-be rebels. Among them, the black-hooded figure, their unseen eyes boring into them.

“Distraction in three...two...one!” said Poe, and the three of them hunkered down, hands over their heads, anticipating the explosion. It didn’t come.

Nearby, in another of the Core Worlds, Hux’s datapad beeped, indicating a contained blast in the fuel shaft of the Kuat power station. He sent the schematic into the air of his office with a wave of his hand, enlarging it and inspecting the blast shields. Not so much as a crack. All systems were stable.

“Outdated tactics,” Hux murmured, more to himself than his guest. “Pitiful, really.” He waved the report away, turning eager eyes back to their game of chess.

Rose and Finn stood up from their protective stances first, looking slowly skyward to the intact orbital ring.

“Any second now,” said Poe, still hunched over.

The troopers drew their blasters, and in the next second were bowled over from behind. The hooded figure had leapt forward with powerful grace and torn through half the platoon in seconds, weilding a dual lightsaber. The twin flashes of golden light on either side of the saber’s black hilt resembled a sun hewn into a blade. The warrior took down everything in their path, lithe and deadly with their weapon. The trio drew their own weapons. Rose and Poe fired away with their blasters and Finn jumped into the fray swinging his blue saber with practiced ease, until they all were surrounded by bodies. Them and the stranger. The warrior let their black hood fall, and then Rey was looking at them, the expression on her face clear and strong as it had always been.

“What are you doing here?” Finn asked, incredulous and happy. “I didn’t sense you!”

Rey spun suddenly and blocked a laser blast no one else had seen coming. Her robe fell from her shoulders. She’d changed dramatically since the last time Finn had seen her. She’d decided to take time by herself, operating away from the Resistance, fighting alongside small revolts instead of taking on big missions. Luke had agreed, and now Rey had been gone nearly three months. Her hair was braided back from her face and then fell loose. She wore armor now, Finn saw. It was discomfitingly similar to that of Kylo Ren, brutal lines sculpted from darkest black, and Finn suppressed the pang of worry that caused. This was _Rey_.

“A new trick, sneaking around. Hope you don’t mind, I wanted to try it out on another Jedi. You can say thank you now,” she said, and then snapped her dual-blade into an acute angle and threw it. It sliced all its path and came back to her. She caught it and snapped it taut as fluidly as if it were an extension of herself. It was, really. Rey had made this lightsaber from her own staff and formed the crystals herself in meditation. Finn had worked by her side on his own blade. More troopers scrambled toward them from all corners of the settlement. Finn force-pushed a unit of eight backward, and together he and his friends ran for shelter behind one of the base’s archways.

“I shouldn’t have dragged you into this,” Poe yelled through lasers at Finn, sheltering on the other side of the door.

“You’d rather be dead by yourself?” Finn shouted back, attempting a shot with his slim silver sidearm in retaliation and barely pulling back in time to dodge another volley from the troopers.

“Yeah, if you were safe.”

“Now’s not the time,” Finn said, even as his stomach fluttered at the words.

“Okay, yeah. Definitely not the time.” Poe conceded.

Outside the archway, something was happening. Migrants flooded the square, pushing the troopers down, fighting back with rocks, with hammers and scraps of metal. There was a chant starting, a word that people of all tongues and creeds and years knew. _Jedi_.

“Now!” Rey yelled, storming forth. She and Finn brandished their lightsabers aloft to the cheers of the crowd. Nothing came close to touching Rey as she cleared the path to the fuel shaft’s lifts. It was more than her own prowess in battle -- the workers were defending her. Protecting her. She hesitated when they reached the lifts, turning back and looking upon the crowd. It was outright war. A revolution.

“Rey, we gotta go,” Finn urged her, bringing up the rear, blocking plasma bolts with his saber.

“I want to fight with them,” she said, face tight.

“Not here. Not now,” said Poe, and she relented, following him into the lift.

Finn was the last in the door, something catching his ankle just as he was about to enter. A white-plated hand. He screamed, kicked it off, met the eyes of the dying trooper it belonged to through their shattered helmet. Eyes he knew, had known once. He entered the lift and sagged against a wall as they hurtled up toward space, his heart hammering and a sickening weight in the pit of his stomach.

Hux’s datapad chimed again, a _call_ from Kuat this time, and he sighed aloud at it, exasperated. “What?” he snapped at the caller, accepting the call as audio only and placing one of the pad’s call-discs in his left ear. The caller was a stiff man called Admiral Pryde whom Hux privately thought would be better suited to talking more credits out of Canto Bight’s (and Hux thought the word acidly) _brightest_ , than command of the Kuat orbital ring.

Hux leaned back in his chair, eyeing the holographic figure seated across from him, the shadowy form of their TIE cockpit barely visible around their body, the entire image emitted from the steel inlay in the far wall that Hux used to transmit his speeches. Hux carelessly knocked over a good half of the physical chess pieces in front of him, putting his bare feet up on his desk. His projected guest scowled at him.

But Hux paled at the words that met his ears through his datapad. _Jedi are with the rebel group that bombed the fueling station...the girl is here_. He ended the call without a goodbye, returning to the other conversation he’d been having, up until this point quite pleasant.

“Ren.”

“What went and bit you?” Ren scoffed at Hux’s grave face, more put out than Hux about the imminent turn away from their game because Ren had been winning -- the cause of Hux’s current near-nudity. Hux was convinced Ren was reading his mind to cheat, although he didn’t have the characteristic headache to prove it, while Ren insisted that moving the pieces from the far reaches of space put him at a disadvantage.

“It’s the scavenger. She’s on Kuat.”

Ren’s face shifted as quickly as Hux’s had, and he cursed. “I’m not close enough. I’ll send the Knights.”

Rey, Poe, Finn, and Rose raced out of the lift door, high above the planet’s surface. “BB!” Poe called into his comms unit, ‘Plan’s gone sideways, we’re meeting you on the ring!” BB-8 beeped incredulously from Poe’s wrist. “Kriff, his shuttle already left. We’re gonna need another ship.” Poe stopped short, eyeing the line up. His eyes settled on the _Eclipse_ , a massive ivory ship, the stern in front of them miles wide, and he smiled.

“You’re not serious,” Rey intoned.

“That’s a Dreadnought,” Finn said. “You can’t fly--”

“I can fly anything.”

“We had better odds on Raxus Prime,” Finn said glumly.

“You need to let Raxus Prime go. Come on, there’s our shuttle,” Poe said, running forward. As a group they jumped a Glide Rover transporting supplies into the Dreadnought.

From across the ring, Admiral Pryde watched the ragged band race toward the _Eclipse_ on the back of a rover. “Where are they going?” he said incredulously as the rover disappeared inside the docked destroyer. He cracked a manic smile as their plan dawned on him. “They can’t possibly.” He leaned over the shoulder of the sweating tech in front of him. “How many men on that ship?”

“Just the bridge crew, sir. The troopers are on leave.”

Rose hacked open the bridge door and shut it behind their group, sealing them in with a very surprised crew. “Who’s in charge here?” she demanded.

“I am,” a brave soul said, adding, “Commander Thanisson.”

“Great,” said Poe. “I’m your new pilot. Where does the pilot sit?”

Rey rolled her eyes and waved her hand. “Set a course for the Nirauan system.” Thanisson relayed her order and the entire crew turned to their task without complaint, seemingly mind-tricked altogether. Finn and Poe took the helm, pressing buttons.

“Bit eerie, that was,” Finn whispered to Poe.

“You can’t do that?” Poe whispered back.

“Not like that.”

“Cold start the engines. We can jump right to hyperspace if we overheat the laser drive.” Rey told them, her old scavenger instincts not lessened over the years.

“Yeah, the exhaust will spill over--” Poe started.

“--into the propulsion systems and freeze the chamber,” Finn finished.

Poe smiled broadly. “Hey, you’re really picking up this stuff. Don’t you see how we--?”

“Not the time,” Finn said again, fondly.

Rose patched herself into the navigation console. “Shields up. Setting calculations for lightspeed. Let’s get somewhere else fast!”

Poe eased his hands into the steering rig of the massive destroyer, muttering about inverted controls, and the _Eclipse_ roughly disengaged from its dock and scraped its way out of the orbital ring. It’s fuel lines snapped free and energy gouted out of them, slicing through the dock’s infrastructure. The ship tipped down, the surface of the planet covering the wide viewport.

“The black empty part is where we need to go!” Rey snapped at him.

“I’m trying, it’s backwards.”

“‘I can fly _anything_ ,’” said Finn, mocking.

“BB! Are you here yet?” Poe shouted at the vicinity of his arm, leaning his face into the steering rig to be heard through his comms unit.

BB-8’s stolen shuttle eased in close, returned from its escape into space, and BB-8 ejected himself, floating through the abyss and through the _Eclipse_ ’s oxygen shield into its hangar with a muted clank. Poe closed the hangar as an affirmative beep echoed out of the steering rig. BB’s abandoned shuttle crashed into part of the orbital ring, tearing it apart and sending a star destroyer up in blue flame. Poe shoved the hyperdrive forward. Bars of light stretched out in front of them.

The _Eclipse_ blurred and vanished at nearly the same instant that a jagged slate-gray ship emerged from hyperspace. The Knights of Ren disembarked from it, approaching Admiral Pryde in a black and seething mass. “We uploaded a tracker to that droid,” Pryde stammered at the hulking knights. “The one they thought they hid so well with _paint_. You’ll have her location as soon as a probe is within range of that machine.”

The knights drew and ignited their red sabers. Pride raised his white blaster up, firing one shot before two of them sliced at him at once, halving him as if with a giant pair of scissors. One knight dropped, shot in the middle. Then the remaining three knights holstered their blades, leaving the bodies of Pryde and their fallen brother in their wake without a backward glance.

  
  


Coruscant was perhaps unrecognizable from its glory days, from the upper levels. The architecture of old had been demolished and built on top of in the brutalist Order fashion, the fluid and shining forms of the old republic remaining visible only in the lowest reaches of the multi-tiered society. A sedimentary rock wall of people and history, towering thousands of feet in the air with speeders and security droids flying by on every level. 

The streets far below were decrepit and filthy, clogged with refuse and plumes of smog. The people, too, were filthy, immigrants from a thousand systems nearly blending in with the detritus as they dodged patrolling troopers on speeder-bikes, hovering above the avenues and scanning the faces below, checking them against an ever-expanding database of those sympathetic to the Resistance.

Worn propaganda posters hung in shreds on the walls. Beneath one, a muted red background with white lettering reading JOIN TODAY, a pair of stormtroopers held a limbless alien, a laboi, down to interrogate her. She snapped her sharp teeth at them in defiance. Just as one of the troopers raised his blaster, a chunk of rock struck his helmet with a jarring sound in the watchful quiet of the alley. The laboi slithered free, disappearing into a junk pile in the blink of an eye, flicking her tail like a whip. The troopers turned, but the only sign of their assailant was a distant clank as the scoundrel fled, likely having knocked some trash over.

At the center of the Coruscanti capital, just below the First Order Capitol Tower, lay Monument Square. It was a silver platform raised above the din of the massive plaza below, choked with tents and teeming crowds. On any given day there were thousands below, but today hardly a flash of the street was visible between the masses. They had gathered for a broadcast.

On the dais, two troopers held a ragged, hooded figure upright. Beside them, another man, blue and transparent -- a hologram. The entire assembled crowd knew the face of their Chancellor.

“Today, another conspirator stands charged with treason,” The wavering ghost of Chancellor Hux said, his voice projected throughout the plaza. One of the troopers removed the hood from the prisoner with a flourish, revealing Wedge’s lined and bruised face to the onlookers. “Though support for his cause has all but vanished,” Hux continued, “Let this day remind us all of the consequences of defying our Supreme Leader.”

The troopers dragged Wedge forward, his bare feet skidding on the platform, and bent him down beneath the humming lightblade of a guillotine. Hux’s holographic form walked lightly up to the machine, looking down at the man. “Kylo Ren is not without pity,” he said to Wedge, and then turned to the crowd. “He offers this traitor the gift of sparing his life, should he reveal the location of the last rebel base.”

Wedge stared silently ahead, his eyes scanning the faces turned up toward him. Hux’s hologram grew irritated, face twisting. “So be it.” His form winked out of existence. The lightblade fell with a hiss, and all eyes below reflected its path, anger burning within them.

Inside the Capitol Tower, Hux stood in his office, having just cut the hologram feed. He stepped off of the platform in the room’s center, the projected scene of the square fading away from him, and moved to his window. The people below were a distant blur from here.

Trooper grip soles padded across the office toward him, a gait he’d recognize anywhere. Phasma, his second in command. “General,” Hux greeted her.

“Sir, they’re here.” She said, voice not moderated through a helmet. Hux turned and took her in. She was aging better than him, he thought with a mix of annoyance and admiration. Her hair was still blonde, her face unlined. She was radiant in her silver armor. He himself, though only thirty-seven, had an impressive shock of gray right through the front of his hair, and while he didn’t yet have wrinkles, he could see in himself -- as he delivered every holographic speech in front of a mirror -- the fine-lined places where the wrinkles would be.

“Come on, then,” he said, joining her as she turned on her heel to walk with him to the War Room. “Are they pleasant today?” he asked teasingly.

“As ever,” Phasma rolled her eyes. The assembled collection of galactic warlords who financed much of the Order’s operations in lieu of Snoke were never pleasant, and Kylo Ren left placating them to Hux. Hux didn’t push Ren to join, if only because he was certain these new financiers would go the way Snoke eventually had: bisected by a lightsaber at the first remark that drew Ren’s ire.

As Hux took his place at the head of the table, Phasma standing at his right shoulder, the assembled warlords were tucking into a bowl of baby shaaks. The tiny herbivores huddled their brown-and-white spotted bodies together for warmth within the crystalline bowl, squealing when they were plucked free by clawed hands and delivered into the sharp mouths of Hux’s guests. The gathered lords were outfitted quite differently from Hux, who still wore his tailored black First Order uniform absent the General’s bands on his wrists. His only addition was a simple durasteel circlet that sat like a half-moon around the back of his head, the edges resting against his temples. This ornament had been at Ren’s taunting insistence. The rest of the persons around the table, eyeing him through faces as varied as the planets they came from, were bejeweled, crusted in stolen loot and wrapped in gaudy robes like sweets in bright wrappers hanging from a vendor’s pole.

Hux spoke to them in his clear and ringing orator’s voice, trying to keep his face neutral against the smell of Lord Gherlid to his right, a carnivorous alien who seemed never to clean his twisting assortment of sharp teeth and who, thusly, was accompanied everywhere by the stench of his oft-open mouth.

“I assure you, the stolen destroyer will be found.” Hux told them.

Lord Gherlid spoke with his mouth full of pulpy half-chewed shaak, spraying dark droplets forth onto the table. “A Dreadnought class warship just slipped through your blunt, skinny fingers, Hux.” The alien held his own claws out in front of him, grasping at the air to drive his point home. “Your words don’t inspire confidence.”

“A lone signal won’t be difficult to trace now. Our transmissions blockade has silenced millions of systems.”

“You can silence planets, Starkiller. But not people.”

Jor Nult, a muscled blue Chiss with ruby-studded braids hanging down to her waist and silver rings in her nose, swiveled her blank red eyes to Hux and added, “There have been uprisings, Hux, across all systems you claim to control. The people believe in Skywalker’s legacy, not in the law. Not in you. Skywalker’s apprentice...this new _Jedi_. She’s their symbol of hope.”

Raykar Shen gurgled out through his curved fangs, his dozens of black eyes addressing the whole table at once. “There are whispers in the streets. The people believe she will destroy you, Hux. You and your master.”

“Kylo Ren,” Hux snapped, “ _Is not my master_.”

The warlords glanced at him, their faces openly discounting that statement. Jor Nult, the only one of them to have been in the company of Ren, the only one to have seen the way Ren held Hux in a vice grip upon returning, twisting and turning him to get a good look before deigning to recognize anyone or anything else, had the audacity to look amused. Hux longed to have the lot of them executed. Unlike Ren, however, he could contain himself.

Uggmot, an Ithorian suffering through his species' difficulty to speak Basic, raised his echoing voice to be heard, the sound emanating from the mouths on each side of his curved head, the globes of his eyes propped up at the top of his skull burning with hatred. “We must kill the last Jedi!”

“The Knights of Ren have been dispatched to eliminate her,” Hux raised his voice as well, over the muttering of the warlords.

“Our fate, in the hands of zealots,” Jor Nult hissed. “You ask for our confidence and provide nothing to inspire it. Where is Kylo Ren?”

“The Supreme Leader will return when he acquires the knowledge he seeks.”

“When?” Jor Nult pressed, unsatisfied. “Do you even know? Does he tell you?” Her eyes narrowed at him, her mouth splitting her face in a sharp, incredulous grin. Hux felt that having spent all the time he had with the scum at this table, he could read their thoughts without Ren’s powers, and Jor Nult was plainly thinking that Hux was only the Supreme Leader’s plaything.

Hux seethed at her, speaking through his teeth. “Soon.”

  
  


Mustafar’s terrain was hard black stone frozen in the shape of the volcanic waves it had once been. Wide streams of it shined like black glass. Obsidian with glinting white edges, a sharp mirror of the night sky above. Kylo Ren mounted a rock precipice, swinging himself up with a grunt and then taking in the view. This planet’s surface was made up of mountains and lava flows and nomadic Sith cults, its sole remaining stone structure before him. Vader’s castle.

It was a forgotten place. _Decaying_ , Kylo thought as he entered. _But perhaps not yet dead. Like me_. The crumbling features of the castle had once been grandiose. Vaulted ceilings and wide stair wells carved from black stone, long windows overlooking the orange flares of the rivers below the cliffs it rested on. By now all that remained of its fabrics were muted tatters and dust. Kylo ignited his saber on instinct, ready to use it as a torch as he had before. But his darksaber provided no light to see by, only shrouding him further in shadow, and he powered it down. A haunting wind blew through the castle, kicking up dust in the hall before him. As though warning him away. When it reached his body it chilled him, not belonging to this hot wasteland, and he knew he was not alone. Again.

“Leave me,” Kylo said.

“This is where the Dark leads you. An empty tomb.” Luke’s voice.

Kylo turned, spinning round, but saw no one. No shimmering form in the moonlight. “Tell me again where it was that your path led you?” Kylo spat at him. “You’re the ghost here, not me.”

“Your Master promised you strength, but you feel hollow.” Luke said, the voice still emanating from behind him. Kylo turned; again, nothing. “I know what you search for, Ben. But you won’t find anything here you did not bring with you.”

“I’ll be more powerful than any Jedi,” Kylo said, his voice echoing in the barren halls. “Even you.”

“Are you sure?” Without waiting for an answer, Luke’s presence departed, another billow of cold tugging at Kylo’s tattered robe. Kylo breathed deeply, clenching his fists, unable to sate the desire to slash and burn and destroy that pulsed through him. He walked forward through the hall, finding an altar at the end. There were scattered and cracked holofilms of a smiling woman. Kylo’s mother had possessed copies of these same images. Padmé Amidala, his grandmother. At the center of the altar lay an obsidian pyramid, thrumming with energy.

Kylo picked it up, holding it aloft, and reached out with the Force, awakening it. The edges of it glowed red, and a voice came from within, the voice he had longed to hear each night that he meditated before the twisted helmet of Vader. The voice of his grandfather. It was not distorted through a vocoder, and it labored, interrupted by gasping breaths.

“This holocron...belongs to my son...I go now to the side of my Master, Darth Sidious…. _Luke_ …” Kylo’s flesh had pebbled up, every hair on his body raised at the sound of this voice, and now his rapture twisted instantly to rage. His grip tightened on the pyramid. “...you are my legacy...here you will acquire great ability...beyond my own in my damaged state...you will harness the power of Mortis, the realm beyond realms, the origin of the Force…you will bring your sister...together, we three will fulfill--”

The holocron’s red light flashed out, scanning Kylo, and it alarmed, the recording stuttering. Kylo Ren did not have Luke Skywalker’s force signature.

The voice of his grandfather faded, breaking up. “--our d-destiny...po-potential--”

The pyramid heated up in Kylo’s hand, painful even through his thick glove, and then a blast of red lightning issued forth, shooting from the pyramid directly into Kylo’s eyes. His thoughts raced under the barrage of pure Force energy, _pain-dark-invasion-KILLING-dark-burning_ . Kylo felt himself young again, swinging his blade at his fellow students, their terrified faces lit blue in the night. The faces morphed between the ones he had known and ones he did not, younger faces within a temple he’d never seen before. But still lit blue, eyes wide with fear, the life within them quickly extinguished. His thoughts were not his own. He longed for people he’d not known. _There’s so much fear. I’m so afraid for her, and he’s betrayed me, what if she’s betrayed me too, she’s working with him... Fear-anger-hatred_ \-- Kylo screamed, voice raw with unbearable pain, and cracked the holocron in his grasp, crumpling to the floor.

  
  


Leia Organa gripped the white stone wall she’d tumbled into, regaining her balance. “Ben,” she said aloud.

“General!” In seconds, Connix was at her side. Chewbacca, walking behind them, wailed at Leia now in concern.

“I’m alright,” Leia told Connix automatically, though she wondered silently whether that would ever be true again. “Remind me where we were going.”

Connix looked at her in alarm, but said, “The team is returned.”

“Mission was a success?” Leia asked.

“No, not exactly.” Connix kept an arm around her, leading her to the overlook. The _Eclipse_ was descending over the jungle surrounding the base, maneuvering through the huge stone archways that it was nearly too big for, tearing the moss out from under them, making the seven-foot-tall aqua mushrooms that glowed in the soil far below sway, escorted by x-wings looking like a swarm of flies around it.

Leia stormed onto the bridge of the _Eclipse_ , her deep green robe billowing behind her, as First Order officers were escorted out in mag-binders.

“You are in strict violation of the Corellian Accords!” an officer was barking at Poe.

“Yeah, put it on my tab, Thanisson,” Poe smiled.

Rose was ripping each officer’s ID bars of their uniform as they passed her. “You mind? I collect these.”

“What should we do with all of them?” Connix asked, standing beside Leia.

“Put them under supervision,” Leia said. “And cook them dinner. They look thin.”

“The punishment for your rebellion will be swift--” Thanisson shrieked at them as he was dragged off of his Dreadnought.

“Scan this ship,” Leia ordered the Resistance forces just entering. “This thing could be crawling with enemy troops. But someone,” she spoke louder, eyeing Poe, “didn’t consider that. Did they?”

“Who says it was me?” Poe complained. “Besides, tell me you haven’t always wanted one of these!”

“Prepare for evacuation,” Leia sighed. “We’re leaving.”

“What? Why?” Poe yelped.

“You stole a star destroyer.”

“I disabled their homing beacon,” Rose chimed in. “We’re free and clear.”

“Would you bet your life on that? All our lives?” At that, Poe and Rose stopped short, eyes downcast. Leia looked past them, taking in the rest of the group. Taking in Rey, standing rigid and alone in her black armor, looking out the viewport with her hands clasped behind her. Her stance mirrored Ben’s in a past life, and Leia steeled herself against another bout of vertigo. “Go,” Leia told the trio in front of her, stopping Finn with a hand after Poe and Rose had gone. “How is she?”

“Hard to tell,” Finn whispered. “Can you talk to her?”

“She doesn’t need a Master now. She needs a friend.” Leia turned, leaving Finn on the bridge with Rey.

Finn approached Rey tentatively, cursing himself for this new timidity he felt in her presence. “You okay?”

“Those people, the children. I saw hope in their eyes.”

“They believe in you. We all do,” Finn told her.

Her shoulders drooped under the weight of his words. “I’ll fail you.”

“Don’t say that! Nothing about this was your fault. And we wouldn’t be here now without you. They know our tactics, that’s all. We’ve fought this war too long.”

“I can’t be who you need me to be,” Rey’s voice grew louder, sharper. “Every night I wake up screaming. Every night I see--” she cut herself off, a tear sliding down her cheek.

“Is it him?” Finn asked.

Rey turned to him, her face stricken. “Sometimes I don’t know where my mind ends and his begins. We’re the _same_. Do you understand? A dyad.”

Finn looked at her blankly, sadly, shaking his head. He’d give anything to understand, to take some of this crushing weight from her.

“We’re the same in the Force,” Rey hissed. “I dream of him, sitting on the ancient throne of the Sith, _and he’s me_.”

“You have to shut him out,” Finn said, convinced of it entirely the moment he said it. “You have to block him. It’s too late for him, Rey. Don’t hurt yourself like this.”

“Was it too late for you?” Rey snapped, and then seeing the look on Finn’s face she dissolved into tears, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. It’s just...I have to believe it's not too late. I have to believe that…because--”

Finn hugged her tight, gathering her in his arms, one hand coming up to pet her hair as she cried into his shoulder. “Shh,” he told her, “It’s alright. It’s all going to be okay. We love you. We love you.”

Chewbacca brayed behind them, having entered the bridge.

Rey wiped her face, pulling away. “What is it?”

Chewie led them outside the ship, to where it's hangar had just been opened to free BB-8. It was a mile-long container filled with imperial weaponry. Ships, walkers, assault vehicles, bikes, and crates upon crates of heavy artillery.

“This is enough firepower to take on the Capitol,” Finn gasped. Poe and Rose ran up, joining them.

Poe laughed, loud and joyful, and jumped up and down where he stood. “See? When have I ever come back empty-handed?!” He slapped Finn’s back and then, deciding that wasn’t enough, picked him up in a hug.

“We have ships and weapons,” said Rose, “but no army.”

“And how would we get an army?” Finn said, voice tight from being manhandled. “No communications. We’re in the dark.”

Rey, beside them, had gone thoughtful. “We don’t have to be. Finn, remember last year Luke told us about--” she stepped back to address them all at once, the trio turning to face her. “There was a Jedi Temple on Coruscant in the Old Republic. They had a communications system, powered by a nexus beneath the temple. It was designed to call all the systems at once to the aid of the Jedi, if there was ever total war. A Force beacon.”

“Yeah, but there’s no way that still works, right?” Finn said.

“No, I bet it does,” Poe disagreed, still holding Finn up. “Old Republic tech was worlds better than the crap we’ve got now.”

“That frequency would predate even the Empire by a thousand years,” Rose mused. “The First Order’s blockade wouldn’t be built to disrupt a signal that old.”

“It’s worth a shot. I hope,” said Poe, setting Finn down at last. “Rey?”

Rey hesitated, not hearing him, an ominous feeling overtaking her, a disturbance....

“ _Rey_.”

She snapped back to the present, looking at each of them in turn, her eyes mournful. “Hope is all we have left.”

  
  


The _Silencer_ landed without announcement on its private dock jutting out from the First Order Capitol Tower in the dead of night. A lev-stretcher was transported off of it by two hovering security droids, being swiftly escorted to the Medical Bay. On it, the prone form of Kylo Ren. His eyes streamed blood down the sides of his face, white sclera crimson and his irises sickeningly yellow. Deep purple veins branched out from his eyes, down his face and even his neck. He writhed on the stretcher, crying out at every shift in motion.

His cries increased in frequency and volume once he’d been deposited on the operating table, surrounded by Medical Droids with their grasping end-effectors and sharp blades. They set to work smelting layers of Mandalorian iron to his face, sizzling away the flesh that had begun to decay so that it could be replaced. Kylo grit his teeth against the pain crawling up his throat, but couldn’t prevent himself from lashing out with his mind. Tables and tools through the entire ward clattered where they lay and lifted inches or feet into the air before being thrown against walls. Kylo reached out, looking for sanctuary...automatically brushing the mind of the scavenger along their bond. He reeled away from her, instantly feeling her revulsion. It wasn’t pointed at him, not exactly. It never had been, for all his crimes. But his presence in her mind made her hate herself, and _she was him_ , so in the end it was the same, and he couldn’t bear it now.

He gathered his concentration to reach for Hux, a more difficult task. The man wasn’t dead to the Force, but he made a habit of actively pulling himself away from it, shrinking back so that Kylo had to grasp for his mind with searching fingertips before wrenching him close enough to dive in. His concentration was broken and he screamed aloud again, mouth wide, teeth bared in agony as a jolt of electricity flowed into the black iron on his face, finishing it.

His eyes opened wide, yellow irises flashing. A vision from the Force wracked his body and mind, delving into his very soul. A well...a deep well, like the entrance to the mirror cave on Ach-To from where voices had whispered to him as he tried to sleep, no matter how far away he moved his mat or how hard he clapped his hands over his ears. A temple older than all known time...no, a temple outside of time. Removed from all but the Force. Mortis….

  
  


Rey landed hard on the soft earth from the flying jump she’d taken to gain the upper hand, falling to her knees. She deactivated her blade and wrenched the blindfold from her eyes, stopping the training bout. Finn stood down at once and powered down his own saber, uncovering his eyes and rushing forward to pull her shoulders up as she fell further, curling in on herself. Rey’s force signature was sickly, her gaze distant. The same vision...but for her, it continued.

The well was before her, endless in its depth and power, the world around it featureless. A hole in the void. But before the well, a figure. It drew a saber from its belt, turning to face her. It was Kylo Ren, but he was changed. Grotesque. He ignited his blade, and the darksaber blurred at the edges of the void around him, seeming to consume it. She brought her own blade up, and its light was diminished, though she didn’t know whether he was to blame, or herself. They fought viciously, but with an animal yell he struck her down. Then the vision released her.

“Rey?” Finn asked her, tipping her face up to look at her.

“I’m okay,” she gasped at once, though her eyes were wild and she took heaving breaths, one hand clutching at her middle where Kylo Ren had stabbed her in the vision.

“What did you see?” Luke’s voice, behind her.

“Ben. He’s changed.”

Luke stepped into her peripheral vision, eyes soft, mouth set in a concerned line. “You saw the future.”

“He saw it too. I could feel him. He was there with me.”

“Where?” Finn asked.

“Mortis,” Rey said, and then screwed her face up in confusion.

Luke knelt next to them slowly, face grave. Rey sat up to meet his eyes, patting Finn’s shoulder reassuringly. _I’m alright now. Really_. “What do you know of Mortis?” Luke asked them.

“It’s a myth,” Rey told him.

“They say the Force comes from there,” Finn added.

“Are _you_ a myth?” Luke chided Rey. “Am I? I suppose I am, now. Mortis is an ancient place. It’s from a time before the Sith, and before the Jedi. There were two beings there once, powerful beings. One Light and one Dark. Together, they brought balance to the Force. But their time is over, and balance has never been restored. The well of Mortis contains a power beyond anything the Jedi have ever known. If Kylo Ren obtains it, all is lost.”

“I saw him strike me down,” Rey said, pained.

“The Force guides us toward balance. It doesn’t show us what we want to see. You’ll need a Navigator, and there are few left....” Luke mused.

“You want her to sacrifice herself?” Finn snapped.

Rey broke in, similarly distraught. “Or...or if I do win, you want me to kill Leia’s son? _Balance_ . Dark puts out the light and then light banishes the dark...over and over for millenia. Wars that span years, lifetimes. How is that balance? It... _it isn't_!”

“I know that anger. Ben had it, and me, and my father before me.”

“So says the Master,” Rey hissed at him, standing, her fists clenched at her sides. “And his Master before him, and Masters going back to the dawn of the Jedi, so eager to tell their padawans how to live.” She gazed down from the clearing in the jungle trees where she and Finn habitually trained to the Resistance base below, watching Poe and Chewie working on the roof of the Falcon, Rose below calibrating rifles. She turned back and looked at Finn. Her Jedi brother. “I spent my whole life wanting a family and now I’ve got one.” She faced Luke. “I’m not giving that up.”

“The Force is calling you, Rey.”

“I’m not who it thinks I am.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m no one,” Rey said immediately.

“If you truly believe that, then the time of the last Jedi has truly come,” Luke warned, holding a palm out to indicate Finn. Rey turned and walked away, sending a thought back to them that made Finn protest and trail after her, and made a line appear between Luke’s eyebrows. _Maybe it has_.

  
  


Hux did not bother with the lights upon entering his quarters. The city outside was luminous enough for him to pick his way across the floor to the wide, circular entry to the balcony. He stood there a moment, letting the slight breeze that wafted the drapes inwards play upon his face. Then, heaving a sigh, he removed his greatcoat and circlet, turning to hang them up on his closet door. He caught his reflection in the mirror in that corner and paused, one gloved hand coming up to touch the growing streak of gray in his hair.

“I like it.”

Hux jumped, swiveling toward the sound of Kylo’s voice. “Stars,” he hissed.

“Has all been well in my absence?”

“You didn’t inform me you were returning, Supreme Leader,” Hux said, recovered from his fright. His face regained its usual haughty expression. “If I’d known--”

“I don’t need grand displays, _Chancellor_. And I prefer you like this. Unaware. Honest.” Kylo stepped forward, out of shadow, gesturing with one hand to bring Hux’s body sliding over to him, tugging him forward by his vertebrae until they were almost chest-to-chest. “My knights told me the girl was within their grasp.”

“Your knights took it upon themselves to deal with my Admiral's failure,” Hux said sharply, annoyance evident on his face.

“You’re only upset you didn’t kill him yourself. But what are we to do about _your_ failure?” Kylo asked him, drinking in the sight of Hux’s face going red with rage.

“ _Mine?_ ” Hux hissed at him. “You found out at the same bloody time I did. I’ll stop wagering with you if it’s that forgettable.”

Kylo’s eyes roved over the dim room suddenly. He twisted his body to look around, finally finding what he sought. “You’ve kept my saber through three moves now.” The old blade’s hilt sat on Hux’s desk, in a glass case, red crystal alive but seldom used within. “Do you hold it close when you miss me?”

“It’s especially comforting to imagine driving it through your skull when you decline my calls,” Hux snapped at him, the anxious rigidity melting out of his posture.

“So cruel,” Kylo murmured fondly.

Hux reached up and turned Kylo’s face toward the light of the balcony, examining the roped scar long-healed, the new black prosthetic inset of that cheek, the webs of dark veins reaching out from his eyelids, the red irritation of his sclera, and the molten gold burning in his irises, only the faintest ring of his old brown in the innermost part of them. Hux’s thumb pressed on his lower lip. Kylo smiled, showing him his bleeding gums before flicking his tongue out to lick the pad of Hux’s thumb. Hux pulled it back with a sneer.

“You look ghoulish.”

“You still want me.”

“What are your orders?” Hux asked, turning his back on Kylo and disappearing behind a divider to undress himself.

“Come back out here. Do that where I can see, you still owe me from before,” Kylo called, removing his gloves and laying them on the desk beside his old weapon.

“Fuck off,” came from behind the divider. Hux didn’t emerge until he was dressed in his sleepwear, still the black regulation shirt and pants he’d worn aboard the Finalizer. He’d run his hands through his hair, loosening it from its styling. “Orders?” he asked again.

“Find the Resistance, wipe them out.”

“Comprehensive.” Hux made to slip by Kylo and Kylo caught him, holding him fast by his thin waist, fingers digging in. “And the Jedi?”

“Leave them to me,” said Kylo, leaning in for a kiss.

Hux twisted away from him. “No, _no_. You disappear for...for months, you ignore my messages, you come back with less of you each time...will I find any additional metal once I get you out of these robes?”

“You do plan on it then?” Kylo breathed against Hux’s cheek, pressing a kiss there, on his temple, the lobe of his ear, anywhere the man would let him reach.

“You can’t do this to me,” Hux struggled and was unable to break Kylo’s grip on him. “I’m the standing joke of the round table here, not knowing where you are or when you’ll haunt my halls again, not even if you’re _alive_.”

“How irritating for you.”

“Starkiller was a mistake.”

A frequent refrain, one that Kylo still pretended not to understand at first. “Yes, Hux. A spectacular one. It blew up.”

“ _After!_ After it blew up, and you came crawling to my quarters, _that was ALSO a mistake_.”

“And every time after? So _many_ mistakes.” Kylo clicked his tongue at Hux. “Even the times you came crawling to me? Do you have any pride left in your body?”

“ _NO!_ ” Hux shouted, despairing. “No, if I had any pride left as it relates to you, I wouldn’t still be here after Crait, after Snoke, when you _choked_ me--”

“You enjoy it.”

“Not when I haven’t asked for it!”

“You were thinking of shooting me. And I did apologize. Which you also enjoyed.”

“If you don’t start _communicating_ with me--”

“You’ll what? Be angry with me?” Kylo grinned, biting at Hux’s jaw. “I love it when you’re angry. It’s delicious.”

“I’ll stage a coup.”

“Ah, that is your style. Let’s go to bed.”

“No. Get out of my room.”

“It’s _our_ room--”

“Could have fooled me, Ren. Will you even be here in the morning?”

“Wait and find out.”

Hux at last turned back toward Kylo, giving in and offering himself up. Despite all his protests and his slight build and his habitual stiffness, Hux kissed fiercely. He always had, from the very first time. Kylo had leaned in, expecting to have to chase Hux into the wall to make any headway, and had instead been pushed back himself with Hux’s mouth eager against his own. So it was tonight, except that by now Kylo was prepared for it. Hux’s hands clasped his face, palms and fingers hot against flesh and sensitized metal, and Hux’s tongue swiped against his before Hux sucked on his lower lip, gasping at the slight jolt of electricity that passed between them. He was thinking that Kylo tasted even bloodier and more _singed_ than he’d imagined, and Kylo chuckled at him. Kylo spun them and pushed Hux back until they were falling into bed, at which point Hux broke from him to snip, “Get your filthy robes off, don’t lay on my clean sheets like this.”

“Get them off me,” Kylo breathed against Hux’s cheek, smiling.

Hux grumbled as he set to work tearing off Kylo’s layers -- _overgrown child, spoiled, how many straps does this have? Absolutely caked in dirt, is this blood? What is wrong with you_ \-- until finally Kylo was bare. Hux tossed his boots further aside than his robes, as if they posed a greater threat to the sanctity of his bed. Kylo kicked off his leggings himself once Hux had pulled them down, hauling Hux up, trying for another kiss. Kylo’s hands had wandered up under Hux’s shirt while he worked. Well, one of them anyway. When he’d reached the other one over Hux had pushed it aside and groused at him for making the process more difficult. Kylo squeezed Hux’s side, circling his thumb around Hux’s navel, slowing when he passed over the soft hair leading down from it to the waistband of his pants.

“Come on, then,” Hux said. “Up.” Kylo obligingly scooted up so that he was laying properly on the bed. Hux settled between his spread legs. This, too, was ritual. Hux needed to catalog him, to know him again. Kylo had changed since Hux had last laid him bare.

“You too,” Kylo said, tugging at the hem of Hux’s shirt, and Hux brushed him off with a scowl. Hux immediately roved his hands over the places where Kylo’s flesh was gone, touching the black metal, old and new, with a pained look on his face.

“I didn’t feel you this time,” he murmured.

“I didn’t reach out. I did, I started to, but then I had a vision.”

“Don’t tell me about it.”

“It was exciting.”

“No, it wasn’t,” Hux’s hands trailed down Kylo’s stomach, the light touch making his abs clench, and then skipped around his groin and the growing need there, moving down his thighs. He stopped cold at Kylo’s knees, one of which was now fully metal, not merely plated. “ _Your ENTIRE lower leg?_ ” Hux brought both hands to it, gently bending the joint, his face aghast. “Isn’t this supposed to make you less powerful, or what have you? Surely there’s some incentive for you to be more careful. _Stars above_.”

“I couldn’t see,” Kylo said, petulant, “and there was lava everywhere, and--”

“You _stepped_ in _lava?_ ”

“Hux--”

“You _STEPPED_ in _LAVA?_ ”

“Don’t use your bridge command voice on me. Am I getting you off tonight or not?” Kylo palmed his own cock where it stood erect between them. “This is still functional, if you wondered.”

“I should have shot you in Snoke’s throne room and saved myself this trouble,” Hux sighed, but he crawled forward to kiss Kylo again, heat building between them. “Beside drawer,” Hux mumbled between kisses, and Kylo retrieved the lubricant from there. Hux turned his face, letting Kylo mouth along his jaw while he slicked his own fingers and then twisted, driving them into himself.

“No, let me,” Kylo whined.

“I don’t like when you do it,” Hux said, “it’s like you’re trying to read a runebook down there. Feeling along. It’s strange.”

“You _love_ when I do it.”

“Hush, I’m ready.”

“No way, that wasn’t long enough.”

“I’ve been…” Hux reddened, “keeping up the practice.” He tossed the bottle of lube onto Kylo’s chest with his free hand. Kylo took it and slicked himself generously, and then drizzled more onto his fingers.

“Let me.”

Hux rolled his eyes but moved forward again, straddling Kylo’s ribs and sitting up so that Kylo could reach back behind him, slipping his fingers inside. Two fingers was a stretch, but not an uncomfortable one. Hux really had been fingering himself in Kylo’s absence. Kylo pulled Hux closer with that contact, pushing his fingers deep enough to make Hux groan, finding his prostate immediately through rote memory more than the Force now, and shifted up to bite Hux’s stomach. Hux smacked his shoulder.

“I said I’m ready, Ren.”

“Switch me.”

“No, I’m riding you.”

“You’re not using me like a toy, it’s been forever, I want to fuck you.”

Hux gripped Kylo’s wrist and pulled his hand away, hissing when Kylo scissored him roughly on the way out, and then gripped the base of Kylo’s cock and lowered himself onto it. Kylo lifted his hips up as Hux bore down on him, and then Hux was fully seated, his eyes half-closed and mouth soft. He was beautiful like this, in a way he wasn’t when he was more alert. He was beautiful then, too, but _sharp_. A shining knife. This Hux, this blissed out one, was infinitely more precious to Kylo because he surfaced only in these moments. Kylo had never dared to say as much to Hux because he’d ruin it, he’d scoff or take offense, but with his face gone gentle in the silver light of the nighttime, Hux’s beauty reminded Kylo of the white flowers that grew on the sea cliffs where he’d begun his training in the Force. White flowers with pale green leaves trembling in the night sea air. It was partially because Hux always tasted of the sea when they did this. It had surprised Kylo the first time, to dip into Hux’s mind during and nearly drown in salt spray. But Hux’s formative memories were of the stormy seas of his home planet, and so there his mind returned when it was broken out of its learned logic, pleasure-addled.

Kylo shifted below him, gripping his hips as he sat up beneath him, holding Hux in his lap, and then moved his hands up, one on the small of Hux’s back and one on his neck. The movement of Kylo’s hips drew another sound from Hux, his mouth falling open. Kylo dug his fingers into the back of his neck and said. “Okay. Now ride me.”

Hux did, bringing himself up, feeling Kylo slide partially out, and then back down in the rhythm they both liked best. Kylo used his grip to quicken Hux’s downstrokes, pushing him down, and snapping his own hips up as much as he could to hit the right spot on every thrust. It had been too long, _far too long_ , Kylo thought, barely blinking, trying to take in every minute change in Hux’s face. They were cresting too soon in sync with the waves, Hux’s orgasm mounting even with his cock untouched, and Kylo unwilling to tear himself away from Hux’s mind.

“Switch me.”

Hux groaned, a sound between pleasure and annoyance, and dismounted, falling away to the side and bringing his knees up. “Get on with it then.”

Kylo surged up and half-pulled Hux under him, half-crawled to where Hux was, lining himself up and then sinking in again to the root. They both made noises at that, lying awkwardly diagonal on the wrinkled bed covers, Hux’s head lolling back off the edge when he stopped trying to hold it up, the column of his throat exposed and taut as Kylo drove into him.

“So good, Kylo,” Hux moaned. Kylo could feel his pleasure reaching its peak again, but would have known even without the Force. Hux only called him ‘Kylo’ when he was within a five minute radius of coming. Kylo shifted his weight to one hand so that he could pump Hux’s cock with the other, and Hux finished, dragging Kylo over the edge with him.

Hux recovered first, as he always did, running his fingers through Kylo’s sweaty hair, lifting his head to peer up at Kylo with those eyes like sea ice. “Did you make anything float this time?”

For a moment Kylo was unsure who had asked that, whose thoughts were whose, and then he set to work making sense of his mind, untangling it from Hux’s. “...chair, corner.”

Hux looked. “Ah.”

“And the brandy on the dresser.”

“Set that down gently or you won’t fuck me again for…” He thought ‘ _the next two_ ’, he said, “...the next five times. I’ll tie you down.”

“It wouldn’t work,” Kylo said, settling the brandy back carefully into its place anyway. He pulled out of Hux, both of them gasping a little at the feeling, oversensitive. They settled together on Kylo’s side of the bed, avoiding the wet spot they’d made. At least their unusual positioning for the act had its merits. Hux pressed his face into Kylo’s neck and then drew back, bristling when Kylo’s iron-plated cheek pressed cold against his forehead.

“Move, we’re trading sides of the bed.”

Kylo shifted enough for Hux to lay on his other side, burying his face in that side of Kylo’s neck, where Kylo’s jaw was warm flesh. Hux’s breathing slowed and the man’s mind slipped into dreams. Images flickered there, and Kylo observed, as he often did, twirling them around his fingers and reforming them whenever Hux’s unfortunate childhood made a lengthy appearance, smudging away his father’s face. Kylo delicately disentangled himself and sat up, facing his grandfather’s helmet on it’s obsidian pedestal. Another relic that Hux had toted around, and this was one that Kylo was sure Hux wasn’t keeping for himself. He knew the man despised it. This was for Kylo’s sake. He stared into the sunken eye holes of the helmet, and spoke quietly to it.

“I understand you now,” Kylo said. “Your weakness. Your pain. Love clouded your judgement. It split your loyalties.”

Kylo stood and picked up the helmet. He gazed for a moment at Hux’s sleeping form, the way the lights of the teeming city outside played across the white plane of his back, the jut of his shoulder. He knew the man’s head intimately, knew what pleased him and what punished him, knew his ambitions and secrets and dreams. He still dreamed of killing Kylo sometimes, of sinking a blaster bolt between his eyes or even of choking him dead with his own hands, something impossible in reality. He was dreaming that now. Kylo left it; it didn’t distress either of them. In his waking hours Hux was as dependent on Kylo as Kylo was on him, and highly aware of their mutual need. He was reasonably sure that Hux would never pose the problem for him that Senator Amidala had posed for Vader. Even though the way Hux looked at him, without the power of the Force yet still piercing, still observing each tiny detail about him and seeing more than Kylo had ever wanted to share, left Kylo feeling just as laid bare as Hux was to him. Well, if Hux ever did become problematic….

Kylo walked to the balcony, peering over the edge. They were a thousand feet up, clouds swirling below. Kylo held his grandfather’s helmet over the edge. “I will succeed where you failed,” he said, and dropped it. It plunged into the clouds.

Kylo woke with Hux’s pale green eyes on him. He was sitting up on his elbow, looking down at Kylo in that way he did, with the face that was reserved for Kylo, fury and fondness in equal measures. Hux’s fingers were tracing his shoulder, made up of black iron now for the last year. The contrast between his fingertips roving over flesh and sensors made Kylo stretch and shiver pleasantly. “Still here,” he told Hux.

“Not for long,” Hux scowled at him. “I received word that the _Silencer_ is ready.”

“As if you would have lounged here all day had I planned to stay.”

“That’s beside the point.”

“You do miss me when I go.” Kylo closed his eyes, relaxing into the feeling of Hux’s fingertips on his chest, the heat of him beside him.

“You’re going after the girl.”

Kylo’s eyes opened, his expression sour. “She’s...beloved. The people call for her. She fuels their unrest, but their belief in her is the solace of the weak. I will crush them all.”

“You’ll destroy each other, you and her. Jedi and Sith always have. It’s the only promise your ancient religion will fulfill.”

“Hm. What will you do then?”

“It’s what I’m keeping that disaster of a blade for. I’ll drive it through my chest.”

“Poetic. Dramatic, for you.”

“It’s your influence,” Hux sighed. ‘It’s ruined me.” He brought the hand on Kylo’s chest up to his chin, tilting his head up into a parting kiss. Kylo tried to deepen it and Hux pulled back, using it as a bargaining chip. It was a poor one; he wanted it as badly as Kylo did and Kylo knew it. Still, Hux asked, “Where is it that you’re going, exactly?”

“In the long term,” Kylo stretched, throwing an arm around Hux and kneading his shoulder, the back of his neck, reaching his fingers up into his hair, still quite red despite the man’s worries, “I’m leaving this realm of existence for Mortis.”

Hux gave him a withering look, opened his mouth to speak.

Kylo cut him off. “This morning, I’m going back to Mustafar.”

Hux’s teeth shut with a click and he grimaced before saying, “Back to the place that did this to you?”

“Didn’t get what I needed.”

“What you need is to be checked for Geonosian brain worms.” Hux’s datapad chimed with an incoming call from across the room and he glanced over at it. Kylo summoned it for him. Hux answered it, audio only, and Kylo promptly pulled Hux on top of him, kissing and scraping his teeth over his throat and shoulders and collarbones as he tried to have his call.

“Sir,” Mitaka’s voice sounded from the machine. “One of our probes picked up the droid’s signal, the droid that was on Kuat. We’ve got them. They’re on Felucia.”

“Ready my ship,” Hux said, and Kylo was delighted that he’d managed to make him sound breathy. “I want to witness their extinction myself. Always with these bloody jungle planets. Prepare the attack.”

“Shall I inform the Supreme Leader?” Mitaka asked.

“Consider that brute informed,” Hux said, and then yelped before he ended the call as Kylo gave him a particularly savage bite.

  
  


Poe and Chewie argued as they loaded up the Falcon, the base buzzing around them as everyone prepared to evacuate.

“Because we’re not letting Finn go alone, okay?” Poe told Chewie for the third time in response to a particularly disgruntled blast of noise from the Wookie, who would have preferred to stay on Leia’s security detail but was loath to let Poe pilot his ship without supervision. “You and me and Finn in the Falcon, Rose and Rey in the Hawk. Rey goes and sees this Navigator she says she needs to, and we help Finn light up the Jedi beacon. Boom!”

The _Phantom Hawk_ was Rose’s light ship, pieced together from parts and looking even junkier than the Falcon, but just as reliable. Rose had the hood open, making some last-minute adjustments. “R2,” she called without looking up from her work. “This is a Corellian hyperdrive. Do you have a keycode on file for this?” R2-D2 beeped at her and projected a hologram grid of keycodes, highlighting the match. Rose looked at the display, wiping her forehead. “That’s every hyperdrive key in the old Imperial fleet. They still use these. Where’d you get this?”

R2 beeped again. Rey looked down at him fondly. “You shouldn’t download data from just anywhere, you don’t know where it's been,” she teased.

The group had unconsciously slowed their movements in the last half hour. The time of their latest goodbye was approaching. They always hoped it wouldn’t be the last one, but they were nevertheless steeped in the anxiety that it might be. It made each of them seemed to glow in the sunlight in the eyes of the others as they memorized the faces of their puzzle-piece family. Finn approached Rey. “You’ve come a long way since Jakku.”

Rey missed a beat, taken aback, and then smiled at him. “So have you.” She glanced to the side, at the Resistance members loading up evac shuttles. “They rely on you. They should.” He opened his arms, and she hugged him tight.

Poe jogged up, “We should get outta here, before, uh-- I don’t mean to rush you...but--” Finn released Rey.

“Take care of each other,” Rey told Finn. Finn absently touched the hilt of his lightsaber.

“We will.”

“See you soon,” Poe told her.

As Poe and Finn returned to the Falcon, Poe’s arm around Finn, Leia approached.

Rey addressed her. “Leia, I--”

“No,” Leia interrupted her, seeing the thoughts in Rey’s mind before she voiced them.

“Yes,” Rey argued. “I can save your son.”

“I believed that once.”

“There’s good in him.”

“There’s good in all of us. Just as there is bad in all of us. It’s not what’s in his soul that matters now. It’s what he does with it. The boy I knew is gone. Rey...be careful.”

“Master Luke trained me well.”

“Some things you can’t train for.” Leia eyed Finn and Poe disappearing up the Falcon’s ramp, and then Rose shutting the Hawk’s hood.

“I don’t...I can’t. There are rules, Jedi rules, and when I want to break them…” Rey’s eyes found Leia’s, frightened, “...isn’t that _him?_ I need distance.”

“Rey,” Leia said sternly. “You need family. Rules written by who?” she scoffed, “Some old man, a thousand years before you were born. Do you know what? My whole life I heard one word over and over. _Balance_ . And everyone seemed to have their own idea of what it meant, each idea a bit different than the last. I never understood it, until I met you. The first time I saw you, I heard that word again like it was whispered to me.” Leia took Rey’s hand. “You’re not like my father, or my brother, or me. And whatever it is that you share with Ben, it isn’t this. This is _yours_ . You’re _new_. Whatever happens, remember that your story isn’t written by anyone else.”

 _BOOM_ . A concussive blast shook the base as the mountain beside it was obliterated into dust. Alarms blared. Pilots ran for their ships. A tech screamed at them, “Resurgent class star destroyer detected, we’re taking fire!” The command intercom flared to life in a burst of static, warning the base en masse that evacuation for rendezvous point crimson was now mandatory. Resistance guards hurried to Leia’s side. “Route all unarmored transports to the _Eclipse_ , it’s our only way out.”

“Rey, we have to go!” Rose yelled, and Rey ran to the Hawk.

Finn and Poe spun into the pilot seats of the Falcon, Chewie roaring at them and banging on the wall with one fur-covered fist, R2 and BB-8 installed in the main bay.

“I know, I know, your seat.” Poe muttered, flipping the ignition.

Finn cast another look at Rose’s ship. “Good luck, Rey.”

Rey answered him as if he were the one sitting beside her, “You too.”

Rose reversed the Hawk out of the hangar, Rey by her side and Threepio behind them. Another nearby blast from the star destroyer above pulsed their shields.

Threepio started in his worried tone, “I’m afraid our shields cannot withstand--”

“Just tell me the odds,” Rose said. “I like numbers.”

Their ships rose into the air, looking down on the jungle on fire. Laser blasts bombarded the rubble of the mountain and the base. The ancient stone archways that had guarded Felucia’s landscape for centuries crumbled, crashing down on the flora below, kicking up bioluminescent dust. Transports and fighters darted to safety within the open docking bays of the _Eclipse_ as it rose from the valley.

On the bridge of the _Finalizer_ , Hux gazed out the viewport at the glowing planet beyond. Two more star destroyers arrived from lightspeed, flanking his.

“Blow any ships leaving the planet out of space,” Hux ordered. “Weapon status?”

“Primary weapon charged, sir,” Mitaka said.

“Fire.”

Below them, the Resistance base erupted into flame under the heat of the laser, debris from the mountain range kicked up into space. The destruction branched out in a ring from the point of detonation until half the planet looked to be ablaze. Three ships broke the atmosphere one after the other -- the _Eclipse_ , unmistakable, and two smaller craft. The Dreadnought and one of the small ships punched to lightspeed, gone in a blink.

“We can’t make the jump with all this debris,” Rose cried.

“Neither can that destroyer,” Rey said.

“Doesn’t keep them from shooting at us.” Rose’s statement was punctuated by their shields quaking and the blare of damage alarms.

“Let me fly,” Rey said, and they traded positions awkwardly, Rose sliding by under Rey to get to the other seat. In place, Rey swerved the Hawk through chunks of new space rock, dipping out of sight of the star destroyers. For a moment, it seemed they were safe. Then, a new round of laser fire. Not as high-powered as a destroyer, but enough to rock the ship.

“Who’s this?” Rose mused.

The jagged craft was right on their tail, pursuing them through the spinning pieces of Felucia’s mountains, blowing them into smaller bits when their lasers missed the Hawk. The peak of the mountain hovered in front of them, and Rey pushed the Hawk toward it, flying up the fragmented and icy face of the mountain in the cold darkness of space. The fragment spiraled, the horizon lifting, and then the scene was inverted, the mountain hanging above them and the starry expanse below. A jut of ice lay in front of them. Rey fired on it and it blasted apart, sending projectiles spinning back into the path of their pursuer. The jagged craft was hit, careening off course.

“We’re clear, punch it!” Rose whooped. Light bent ahead of them as they rocketed into hyperspace.

  
  


Kylo’s TIE _Silencer_ landed again on the black and craggy surface of Mustafar, this time nearer to Vader’s fortress, and without any lava flows between him and his goal. Just in case. Again, Kylo made the trek into the castle, and again the wind haunted him. But so far, it was the right temperature.

He walked down the hallway, pausing at the altar where he’d been wounded, glancing at the shards of the holocron on the floor. He’d shattered it in his hand. His grandmother’s face stared up at him from holofilms, all of them cracked with age but some of them still moving in pieces: the twitch of a smile beneath frozen eyes, a body moving in a frame and disappearing where it should glide smoothly. A fragmented and splintered ghost.

Kylo moved on, turning to his left into the courtyard. There were no living plants here, as none could survive without a caretaker, but at its edges the dry forms of white trees reached up like twisted, searching hands into the night sky, grabbing for the twinkling stars. There were crumbling benches and, in the center of the space, a stone pit where a glowing white fire crackled. It put off cold instead of heat. It whispered.

“Reveal yourself.” Kylo demanded.

A presence. Not Luke. It was behind him, as presences were wont to be. This time he didn’t turn, although he did draw his saber and ignite it.

“You wish to obtain the power of those who came before. Not only before you but before all. They were gods. The gods of Mortis.” The voice was young, higher than Kylo’s, but sure and strong. Almost cocky. Kylo’s face twitched.

“I do,” he said simply.

“To rule the galaxy without an army. Without starships.”

“Yes.”

“You need this power.”

“ _Yes_.”

“Your vessel is weak.”

Kylo turned at last, with a hiss, to face whoever dared insult him. He had been right that the man was young. He was perhaps twenty. He was also dead, his form glowing with blue-tinged light in the night. He had tousled blond hair and a faint scar running along his right temple. He stood slightly shorter than Kylo, shorter than Hux, but he stood proudly with his shoulders back. He had a warrior’s stance. He was clothed in the dark brown robes of a lowly Jedi Guardian.

“You’re a shade,” Kylo spat at him. “Who are you to call me weak?”

“I’ve been where you are,” the man said, walking closer leisurely, circling him, looking around the courtyard as if Kylo disinterested him. “Your vessel is weak, as mine was.”

Recognition was dawning on Kylo, along with a surge of horror.

“You think yourself a Sith?” the man continued. “The Sith are unrepentant, remorseless, severed from their past. You’re haunted by your past. Hunted by it, by your very existence. As I was.”

“Grandfather?” Kylo breathed.

  
  


The Hawk descended on Bonadan, a planet of continual sunset and cylindrical plateaus above water clotted with junk boats. The colorful paper lanterns of the bustling night markets lit the surface of the globe. They landed on a multi-leveled dock like a cluster of lily pads.

Rose argued with the two short, round aliens in charge of the docking procedure. “I know it's a Correllian light ship but you’re gonna say it's a Praddor cruiser in the registry. That’s why I winked when I paid you the credits. Understand?” The dock-keepers chattered to each other in their language, voices rising, becoming shrill. “Which one of you is in charge? You both look the same.”

Rey exited the Hawk, and Rose stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “You can’t go into the markets like this, you look like a--” she whispered, “Jedi.”

“What does that mean?”

“Just tone it down. Let’s go together. Threepio, will you sort this out?” Threepio walked forward, and he at least was able to address the squabbling aliens in their native tongue.

As they entered the markets, Rose steered Rey toward a merchant selling colorful patterned headscarves. Rey tugged one down from it’s hanging display. “How much?” The merchant shook her head, pushing the emerald garment with its intricate bronze threading into Rey’s hands with a wide gap-toothed smile. “Thank you.” Rose selected a smoky pink one with golden embroidery, and was also refused her offer of credits.

Rose and Rey walked together through the crowded docks, undercover, the boat-stalls overflowing with crafts and live animals and street foods. At intervals, the walking platforms were crowded with street performers. Rey adjusted her loosely-wrapped hood uncomfortably whenever strangers passed too close.

“I like it,” Rose told her. “You look pretty in green. It suits you. I think everything would, though. Hey, we look like a pair of locals.”

“You’ve been here before?”

“Once before, with Paige. We came here on leave and sailed together. The ships further out trail lanterns above them on tethers. You’ve never seen so many lights. Paige loved it,” Rose’s face held an exquisite mix of sadness and love. Rose felt Rey looking at her, looking through her the way that Jedi did, and eyed her in return. “What do you remember about your family?”

Rey looked down as they walked, digging for a memory before her abandonment. There were few. “They struggled. They were sad. But there was love, I thought...my father would build me little starships out of wood. They fit in my hand. I thought they loved me. It’s why I waited so long.” Her face darkened. “But I must have imagined it. They sold me. I’m no one, not even to my parents.”

Rose looked at Rey in the sunset light, wishing she could change the past for her friend and unable to do so. “No one is no one,” she said, “and you’re definitely someone to me.” Rey took that in, considering. She was so lost in her thoughts she didn’t detect the troopers until it was nearly too late. She gasped and tugged Rose aside onto a soup peddler’s boat as the troopers passed. The peddler didn’t bark at them for trespassing, only offered them a taste of her wares. Once the danger was gone, Rey and Rose continued on their path to the Navigator.

“Here,” Rey said, and they stepped into a domed wooden hut built on an outlying dock, steam rising from its roof. Inside, the circular room was draped with colorful fabrics and the floor lined with shining glass beads. In the center of the room lay a steaming vat of fragrant tea, leaves and flowers bubbling within it. Sentients lounged on the outer edge of the room, smoking pipes. On the other side of the vat, a Pantoran woman sat with her legs folded beneath her on a pillow, her blue skin marked with bright yellow paint and her purple hair loosely covered with yellow silk.

“Easy on the details, right?” Rose whispered. “They don’t have to know who or why, just what you saw.”

The Pantoran looked up, smiling at Rey. “A Jedi,” she proclaimed. “Rey of the Resistance.” All eyes in the room turned to Rey.

“Or this,” Rose sighed. “Guess we’re doing this.”

“I am Tassa,” the Pantoran said. “Come, sit.” Rose and Rey seated themselves on the empty pillows opposite Tassa, herbal steam rising between them. “You seek a place.”

“Mortis. I saw it in--”

“The mouth on the Jedi stops and the mind makes the picture.”

Rey closed her eyes and breathed deeply, showing Tassa what she had seen. Tassa raised both her hands, palms up. In scattered places, round glass beads floated out of the floor, making a picture in the air of the galaxy. “The place is old,” she said. “The first. The first where good was done, and evil too.”

Rey opened her eyes, taking in the little marble-planets hovering around them. “Which one?”

“The place is within.”

Rose interrupted, “I know this is your thing, the two of you, but we’re in a hurry--”

“Speak not. The Jedi knows the path. The place is within.” Rey’s eyes closed again as she let herself be drawn into meditation. She saw the snowy forest of Starkiller again, black sky and trees a darkened blur above white ground. “The two meet,” Tassa said, “drawn together by the Force. The Dark and the Light.” The vision shifted, now the well Rey had seen before, and the familiar figure in front of it. “There she will make the sacrifice.” The form of Kylo Ren ignited his saber and struck her down.

Rey’s eyes snapped open.

“What?” Rose asked. “What sacrifice? What do you mean, sacrifice?”

A large black marble floated into Tassa’s hand and she gripped it tightly. It glowed faintly blue from her fist, a starmap being etched within it. “The Jedi must go alone to this place where the two meet.”

“No, hold on a second,” Rose protested. Tassa handed the map to Rey, who took it and thanked her. “We’re not leaving yet,” Rose said, “What did she see?” She turned to Rey. “What did you see?”

“The Jedi will make the sacrifice,” Tassa said again.

Rey tugged Rose up and toward the door, turning back at the last second. “Is there another path?”

Tassa gazed up at them with wide, unreadable amber eyes. “There is always another path.”

Rey and Rose made their way back toward the lily pad docks, when suddenly in the bustling market they were met by two Knights of Ren, walking out from between boat stalls to stand in their path. Their jagged ship was docked next to the Hawk. Rey felt the third knight take his place behind her, blocking their exit. Rey reached up, going for the lightsaber strapped her back.

“Not here,” Rose said, though she, too, reached for her blaster.

Rey eyed the crowds around them, arriving at the same conclusion Rose had: had a place been built to incur casualties, the night markets would still outdo it. Rey clenched her other fist and Force-pushed everything around her, knocking everyone except herself and Rose away into the water, sending boat-stalls sailing out and away. The knights resisted the blast, standing firm.

Rey activated her dual saber, bringing it out in front of her. “One behind us,” she told Rose, and leapt at the two knights before them, spinning and striking fast. Rose swiveled to take on the lone knight, shooting three rounds at him. He deflected her bolts, igniting his red saber and spinning it as he approached. He sent one of Rose’s plasma bolts back toward her and she failed to dodge in time. She fell with a scream.

Rey, filled with rage at the sound of Rose’s pain, kicked the knight in front of her away, spinning and slicing through the other, dropping him dead. Then she reached out, pulling the first knight back with the Force, impaling him on her lightsaber. The last knight approached, holding his spitting red saber above Rose’s skull as she lay vulnerable on the dock, ready to finish her and then challenge Rey.

Teeth clenched, eyes burning, Rey extended her hand, reaching out with her fear and anger. Lighting flowed from her fingertips, golden and crackling like her blades. The knight’s skull flashed through his helmet as the electricity destroyed him and his body crumpled, smoking. Rose pushed herself up, shaking, gripping her arm where the plasma bolt had hit her.

“I...I had no choice,” Rey said.

“It’s okay,” Rose told her. “Jedi do that. Right?”

“We’ve got to go. Finn and Poe need us.”

  
  


The Falcon descended onto Coruscant, plunging through its skyscraper canyons in the gloom of night. “This ship is recognizable. And wanted. Are we sure Rose’s cloaking device works?” Poe asked nervously, piloting the Falcon toward the darkened form of the old Jedi Temple.

“We’re not dead yet,” Finn answered. “Drop BB and R2 on street level.” He eyed the changing structures as the Falcon dipped. “It’s bad down here.”

“Rich people don’t think about what they’re standing on,” Poe said. The Falcon lifted again from the streets below the temple and landed on it’s roof beside one of the old spires. Finn, Poe, and Chewie unfolded and bolted a retracting ladder into the roof with a thunk. Poe spoke into his wrist-comm, “You droids in the courtyard yet?” R2 beeped an affirmative.

Finn carefully wound the ladder down the side of the roof to the entry below and climbed down, using a muffled charge to melt the Temple door’s ancient locks. “We’re in,” he called up, and Poe followed him.

“Chewie stayed with the Falcon, he’s our getaway driver. You didn’t even need to open the door,” Poe commented. All of the Temple’s windows were shattered, glass and crumbling stone littering the wide hallways, the massive pillars standing like quiet sentinels over an empty and echoing kingdom.

“That looks like what Luke described,” Finn pointed down the wide stairway to a blue kyber crystal the size of a happabore, mounted as a holy sculpture in the middle of the Temple floor. “Come on.”

They jogged down to the sculpture, feeling around the coiled golden base, running their fingers over divots and patterns. “Got one,” said Poe, sticking his fingertips in an inset.

“Okay, I’ve got the other one here,” Finn said, and carefully unwrapped a pair of crystals he’d stored in his pocket, sliding halfway around the base to hand one to Poe.

“Where’d you get these?”

“Leia. It’s hers and Luke’s...or Luke’s dad, I guess, since it's the blue one. Be careful with them.” Together, they inserted their crystals into the base of the sculpture.

A deep click resonated through the Temple. In a ring around the sculpture, the floor opened and twisting golden machinery rose up, Old Republic tech. The giant blue crystal came to life, glowing from the depths within, lighting the room. The working machines around them lifted magnifying glasses and smaller crystals up, bouncing the light around until each was glowing, their static humming filling the air. Then, the base of the sculpture shorted, sparks flying out, and all went dark.

“Can’t it be easy, one time? Just one!” Poe griped, pounding the base with his fist.

  
  


Kylo looked into the face of his grandfather, the face of Darth Vader. It was nothing like he’d imagined it. Something pricked at the back of his mind, some grave loss flaring along his connection with the scavenger, and he dismissed it. This was more important. This Vader was not the man who’d held the galaxy in his grip, who’d nearly extinguished the Jedi, whose helmet had inspired Kylo’s mask long ago.

“No,” Vader agreed, plucking Kylo’s thoughts from his head. “I was young when I fell from the Light. Corrupted. And here I returned, thanks to the forgiveness of my son. My name is Anakin, if you must use one. Vader is gone.”

“Your legacy--” Kylo began, echoing the words of the holocron, the words of the man he had aspired to be.

“My _legacy_ ,” Anakin interrupted him, his voice rising in anger, “ _was to live and die a pawn!_ There was no father. Palpatine manipulated the Living Force to trigger my life within my mother, my very existence a Sith plot. A false Chosen One. I was drawn to the Dark. It called to me as it calls to you, and I feared loss, so I heeded it. But it _lies_ . I was used by my Dark Master, as you were. I lost everything. My mother, my wife, my children, my brother...your namesake, the name you’ve thrown aside. I thought I could use the Dark to save Padmé’s life, but upon my defeat Palpatine used it to kill her. Just as he manipulated the Living Force to create me, he did so to save me. The Living Force is nourishment. The more you have the more powerful you become. _He took her life to cheat my death_.” Anakin screamed this last at Kylo, moving forward with quick, decisive steps. His face held a rage Kylo had only ever seen in the minds of others as they looked at him.

Kylo brought up his saber on instinct, defending himself from the Jedi advancing on him. “I _see_ you,” Anakin told him, reaching out one of his ghostly hands. “You don’t see...you will.”

Suddenly Kylo’s thoughts were not his own, just as had happened when he held the holocron. He saw his grandmother as she had once stood on this very planet, through his grandfather’s eyes. He felt Anakin’s rage and fear. He raised his hand and choked her. And then...the loss. The loss of all as the helmet descended.

Kylo wrenched himself away with a scream, falling bodily to the side and catching himself on one knee. He took a deep breath, letting the vision seep away from his eyes like a nightmare in waking moments. Then, he fixed his grandfather, here ten years his junior, with a seething glare. “I will not fall away from power as you did,” he said. “I seek Mortis.”

“You won’t find it here,” Anakin said, turning away, his form shimmering out of existence, the walls of the courtyard visible now through him. “The Alazmec are coming for you now. They protect this place. Go, if you wish to live.”

A dry chattering echoed through the halls of the castle. Alazmec cultists appeared in their domed beetle-like helmets, advancing on Kylo, skittering across the floor and walls. The courtyard was a dead end, and there were many of them. Too many to take at once alone. He raised his saber anyway, dropping into his fighting stance to meet the charge.

 _The Living Force is nourishment. The more you have the more powerful you become_ . Kylo held out his palm to the Alazmec as they thundered toward him. He felt their Force signatures, the very life energy of the souls that inhabited their bodies. He _tugged_. As one they stopped short, trying to scrabble backward and flee. The furthest ones, the ones still capable of it, shrieked. Their cries echoed through the hall.

Kylo gathered their Living Force into the palm of his hand, reducing them to husks. He felt the immense power of it, heavy, his arm struggling to hold it up. He closed his fist, sighing in relief as the power surged into him. He felt restored. And yet.

“More,” he said aloud. There was no more -- he had consumed all that existed on Mustafar. The well, however…. Yes, he needed Mortis. He reached out to the scavenger, tapping a finger along the edge of her mind, knowing she sought that power too. He continued speaking aloud, reading her thoughts as he returned to the _Silencer_. “The place is within.”


	2. Another Path

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again -- second chapter here! Enjoy! There is another sex scene at the end, so that you are aware. I think canon-typical violence sums up any trigger warnings? Let me know if not.

Rey collapsed as they made it back into the Hawk, and Rose lifted her up. “What is it?” she asked, frantic.

“He’s growing stronger,” Rey groaned. “We don’t have much time.”

Rose settled her into the copilot’s chair, taking the black marble from her and handing it to Threepio. “Put this map in the system for later. What? _Coruscant?_ Okay, two troopers with one blaster bolt.” Then, she called Finn. “How’s it going? We’re headed your way!”

In the Jedi Temple, Finn and Poe had removed a portion of the statue’s base with Finn’s vibroblade, and Poe was currently half-inside it, tearing away at wires. BB-8 and R2 waited dutifully beside him.

“How is it going?” Finn repeated Rose’s question. Then, “What can droids even do here?”

“You’re asking me about a Force-powered communication machine.” Poe grunted from within the sculpture. “Of the two of us you’re the expert here.”

“Not my area of expertise.”

“Not anyone’s!” Poe slid out then, and replaced Leia’s crystal, restarting the mechanism. The massive kyber crystal glowed, the machine whirred, and this time a column of light shot out and up through the central spire atop the temple. “Shoot, yeah!” Poe whooped. “R2, now!”

R2-D2 wheeled up to the kyber crystal and projected a hologram message directly onto it. All over the galaxy, even deep into Wild Space, every device capable of audio or video transmission played the hologram.

“This is General Leia Organa of the Resistance. The time has come to forge our path to freedom. The forces of oppression have ruled our galaxy for too long. We must join together now, and fight. Send all your ships, all your warriors...Our voices will not be silenced. We can no longer live in the shadow of the First Order. We must step into the Light. We will take the Capit--”

The message paused, the kyber crystal quaking. A crack appeared in its core. “Something’s wrong,” Finn said. “Take cover!” He grabbed Poe and pulled him aside, sheltering behind a pillar. BB-8 beeped, pushing R2, and they glided away as well, the hologram gone dark.

“Finn,” Poe said as they huddled together, arms around each other, “if this is it, I need you to know--” Finn silenced him with a kiss. The ancient device exploded, and the Temple went dark.

  
  


On the surface of Mustafar, outside his TIE cockpit, Kylo Ren’s yellow eyes gazed up at the night sky, his hand raised, where he held kyber energy still across the galaxy until he felt in his mind the great crystal cleaved in two. Then, he entered his ship.

Hux’s miniature form appeared, blue in the cockpit of the _Silencer_. “Ren, the rebels have attempted to override the communications blockade.”

Kylo smiled at him. “Who do you think stopped them?” Hux’s face shifted into almost comical surprise. He hadn’t known. “You shouldn’t doubt your Supreme Leader, Hux.”

“Nevertheless, such treachery won’t stand.”

“Show them, then.” Kylo’s eyes narrowed, appraising Hux’s image. “You’re wearing my saber.” He could see the silver hilt shining on Hux’s belt.

Hux didn’t acknowledge that, snipping, “Your absence emboldens them. If you’ve acquired the power you sought, come home.”

“Do you miss me in your bed that much?”

“I thought it was ours.”

“Didn’t realize my saber was ours too. I hope you’ve been practicing.” Kylo said, and Hux turned away. Kylo couldn’t tell whether he had flushed through the blue light of the hologram. “You wear it well.”

“Come home,” Hux said, his miniature self fixing its eyes on Kylo again. Kylo considered it, nodded, and shut off the transmission.

  
  


Finn and Poe climbed from the rubble, coughing dust. “You okay?” Finn asked.

“I’m...I’m _great!_ I mean, was that--? Do you?” Poe stuttered, beating dust from his jacket and then wiping Finn’s off, the jacket that had once also belonged to him.

“Yeah,” Finn said, and immediately found himself the recipient of a second, grimier kiss. Alarm klaxons began to ring through the city, along with the distinctive sound of TIE fighters approaching the Temple. “Kriff, we gotta get out of here.”

“We’ll be too exposed on the roof,” said Poe, and then into his comms unit, “Chewie, get out of here, we’ll meet up somewhere else.” The Falcon took off, engines flaring, and the men and droids ran down the Temple steps to the bridge which led away into the city, dashing by trash fires and scattering vagrants as the TIEs pursued them above, raining lasers down. One of the blasts grazed Finn and he fell, tumbling from the side of the bridge into darkness below.

“ _FINN!_ ” Poe screamed, but there was no time to peer over the edge and look for him. Poe dashed around the corner of the first building he came to, swinging himself up a stairwell under heavy fire. Troopers pursued him up the gutted building, light beams shining off the muzzles of their blasters, illuminating the stairwell below him. The night winds tore at him, trying to pull him from the skyscraper. He climbed toward uncertainty, picking chance over a sure death. Seven stories up, the stairs ended. He cursed and ran across the bare durasteel floor, jumping sparking wires and dodging support beams, hoping to find another stairwell across the way.

Instead he found open air. The exterior wall of that side of the building was missing. Poe skidded to a stop, the muddled voices and footsteps of troopers growing louder behind him.

One of them mounted the landing and barked something at the others, training the searching beam of their blaster on Poe. And then, the Falcon appeared in front of him, the ramp lowered. Poe jumped for his life, catching hold of the ramp with both hands and pulling himself up as the Falcon rose out of the line of fire. Poe collapsed inside the ship, breathing hard. Chewie greeted him with a mournful wail, and the Falcon shot off to space to await the rest of the Resistance.

Leia watched space float by outside the viewport of the _Eclipse_ as it soared through the Core Worlds. “Prepare a light shuttle. I need to speak with a friend on Aargau before we reach Coruscant.”

Connix was shocked beside her, “General?” Leia gave her The Look and she rushed to comply. Alone, Leia removed her general’s bars from her robe, and drew her hood up over her head. Luke’s voice appeared behind her, as it often did. “He’s in pain.”

“I feel it too,” Leia told him, turning to look at her brother.

“He’s more powerful than our father.”

“So is she.”

“She feels too much. Love. Anger.”

“Don’t we all?”

“You gave up your studies when your emotions bested you. She can’t. This is why the Jedi have always lived in isolation. The pain of loss...the _fear_ of loss only leads to the Dark side.”

“I’ve lost everyone and everything and I still choose to love,” Leia told Luke, missing him, grieving his early death. Luke, and Han, and Ben, and all of Alderaan, and so many others…. “You need to trust her.”

The Hawk dropped out of lightspeed and sped down into the atmosphere of Coruscant, warnings blinking on the console because of their steep trajectory. Rey cringed, feeling Finn’s pain, feeling Kylo Ren’s power grow. Feeling hers grow with it.

“Where--” Rose began.

“The Capitol Tower,” Rey said automatically.

“What are they doing there?” Rose asked, alarmed.

“Not them. _Him_. Drop me at the Capitol Tower.”

“Rey, no!”

“The place is within. The two meet...it’s within us. He’s my way to Mortis.”

Rose spluttered at her and then said, “Doesn’t that mean you’re _his_ way to Mortis? I think this is a bad idea!”

“Rose, do you trust me?” Rey asked, fixing Rose with a strange look. It wasn’t a question Rey knew the answer to, and she wouldn’t begrudge Rose should the answer be no. Rey wasn’t sure yet that she trusted herself.

“Yes,” said Rose firmly, and began the descent into Monument Square. As soon as the Hawk touched down laser fire rained on it from the tower’s defenses, blowing away their battered shields and riddling the engine with holes.

Rey and Rose and Threepio escaped the craft just before it went up in flames, running straight into the plastisteel-covered arms of stormtroopers. They discarded Threepio over the edge of the platform, but held fast to Rey and Rose. Rey pushed away the troopers holding her with the Force, and reached up for her saber to free Rose.

“No!” Rose yelled, “Just go!”

Rey turned and ran for the Capitol Tower, mounting the steps to it and flinging open the doors, entering darkness….

She peered around at tall trees, black trunks disappearing up into the night sky. Except this time there were no stars. The ground was white, covered in snow. Her footsteps were crisp, crunching into it, leaving prints behind. It was Starkiller, and also was not. This place whispered. The Force was strong here. She journeyed on.

  
  


Kylo had given no announcement of his impending arrival again, but this time Hux waited for him at the door to the tower from Kylo’s private dock. He was wrapped in one of Kylo’s robes to stay warm, his face in shadow, but Kylo knew it was him. He could feel him. Kylo exited the cockpit of the Silencer, nearly jogging to Hux, beyond caring if the man knew he was eager to see him. “Who’s there?” he said, tugging at the edges of the robe’s hood, a joke.

“Someone who hates you,” Hux replied, pulling his hood down. The high-altitude winds ruffled his hair, and his nose was pink. He’d been waiting a while. Surely not the entire flight here, or at least not all of that outside. He’d be frozen solid. Hux went in for a kiss before Kylo got another word out, his nose cold where it touched Kylo’s cheek.

“Come inside,” Kylo said, as though he’d been the one waiting.

“No,” Hux murmured against his mouth, unwilling to pull away, hands fisted in the front of Kylo’s robes.

“Why not? You’re cold.”

“You’re going to do something idiotic the second this is over. Just let me have this a while longer.”

“Why? What’s happened?” Kylo asked, dread settling into his stomach at the ridiculous thought that Hux might know something he didn’t. He brushed over Hux’s mind just in case, finding only his relief at having Kylo home safe.

“You mean you aren’t upset?”

“What have you done?” Kylo tipped Hux’s chin one way and then the other with one gloved hand, examining him, and then ran his hands down Hux’s shoulders, his arms, his waist, patting them through the billowing robe. No pain, no injuries. Nothing different.

“Not me,” Hux said, his eyebrows tilting up. “The girl. You mean you didn’t feel it?”

Kylo’s dread intensified...the girl...what had she-- The answer hit him like a blow. He couldn’t feel the mind-presence of his knights. He choked, pulling Hux in tight, wrapping his arms around him. Hux hugged him back, letting Kylo sob into his shoulder. “I’ll skin her alive,” Kylo forced out through his clenched teeth between the ragged breaths that rocked his body.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” Hux asked him, steering the conversation away into different territory. Normally one of the graces he afforded Kylo on the brink of a meltdown. But now, it burned. The memory of his grandfather was soured on Kylo’s tongue, especially now that he couldn’t bring himself to separate from Hux, to cease clinging to him like a child. _Your vessel is weak_. For an instant Kylo thought of throwing Hux over the side of the dock to meet his end some hundreds of stories below just as Vader’s helmet had, but he knew as soon as the thought appeared that he couldn’t do it. He thought, erratically, that if Hux could hear him the way he could hear Hux, Hux would punish him somehow. The way Kylo had punished Hux in Snoke’s throne room, for drawing his blaster. Kylo laughed, a broken sound. Then he found his voice again.

“Yes,” Kylo said. “Yes, I found power beyond what any Jedi ever possessed. And I know the way to Mortis. It lies with her.”

Hux didn’t respond to that for a long while, only holding Kylo close, one arm wrapped around his ribs -- holding him together, Kylo thought erratically, because surely he’d fly apart without it -- and one on the back of his neck, fingers buried in his hair. He was solid in Kylo’s arms. He’d always been that: thin, but solid. Kylo moved his face in against Hux’s jaw, smelling the familiar crisp scent of his aftershave, feeling the knot of grief in his stomach loosen. At last Hux said, “I don’t suppose I can dissuade you?”

Kylo rankled at that. “You doubt me.”

“Is that what it was when you spent the better part of fifteen days coming up with reasons for me not to attend the Bespin negotiations without you? You were doubting me?”

“That’s different. There was an assassination attempt, I was right!”

“And I’m right about this. I know I don’t have your...your Force abilities, but... _I’m right._ You’re not coming back from this whole, I know it, and -- and there are precious few pieces of you left as it is,” Hux pulled back to look Kylo in his face, and there were tears sliding down his cheeks from those green eyes.

“You would turn me from my path,” Kylo said, voice cold. “What would you have us do? Surrender?”

“No. I don’t know. Ren--”

Kylo pushed him backwards, entering the tower and throwing Hux down on the floor. “Your lack of faith,” he spat at him, “disturbs me.” And in that instant, he felt her. He looked past Hux, toward the inner stairway of the tower. The scavenger was on Coruscant…she was in the tower. “She’s here,” Kylo said, looking down at Hux where he lay on the floor, breathing hard. Kylo hadn’t touched him in anger since their fight in the throne room. He’d seen how badly it had affected Hux then. Hux’s face was white now. Something within Kylo burned with approval at that. _He fears me. He should fear me. They all should_.

But then, Hux was struggling to his feet, speaking again, his fear horribly short-lived. His mind was flaring with concern, with _love_ , love that outweighed fear. Kylo felt again the pit in his stomach from when he’d faced his grandfather. “Ren please. Don’t go to her. I...I won’t stop you. Hells, I can’t stop you. Only please--”

Kylo lifted a hand to choke the words in Hux’s throat before they could leave it, and Hux flinched. For only an instant it was as though Senator Amidala’s face was superimposed upon Hux’s in his mind’s eye, both of their eyes wide with panicked love. Then it was gone, and there was only Hux. And Kylo. The beast inside Kylo, which only a moment ago had been snorting and stomping its feet at the sight of Hux afraid, turned its tail. He felt sick. Kylo pushed past Hux and onto the Tower’s spiral stairs, making his way down to meet the scavenger. He felt less like he was pursuing his enemy and more like he was fleeing his lover. _I will succeed where he failed. I will succeed_ \--

  
  


Finn sprinted through the lowest level of the Coruscanti capital, dodging searchlights. He’d managed to slow his fall through the use of the Force, modifying his own body’s velocity just like when he jumped to great heights in training. It had felt strange, but worked, and he filed away that skill for later. He turned a corner and found himself up against a metal grate, a stormtrooper hot on his heels. Finn turned and held his palm up, knocking them back before they could go for their blaster, planting the back of their helmet against the durasteel wall with a clunk.

The trooper groaned, shocked by the sudden attack, and Finn unlatched their helmet, pulling it off with a hiss. Scared eyes stared up at him. The trooper was a girl, no older than himself, her dark hair coiled in braids pinned around her head, pieces of it now flying free, mussed by her helmet’s removal.

Finn disarmed her, snatching away her blaster. It flew to his hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna hurt you. Just no funny stuff,” he told her. “What do you remember? How far back?”

“Huh?”

“Do you remember when you were taken? Do you remember your parents?”

“I...I don’t know.”

“Yeah you do. You remember everything. Conditioning camp? The serums and the propaganda and the drills. You remember all of it.”

“It was t-training--”

“That’s what I thought by the end, too. It’s what they tell you. What’s your name?”

“RK-514. Hey...you’re him, you’re that traitor…” Her eyes found the saber hilt on his belt and widened.

“Yeah, that’s right. I’m your brother. You were my sister once. All of us together. Give me your comm link.” The trooper handed it over, taking a shaky step forward and going to her knees, holding her hands up. Finn continued, “You had a name once, a real name. What was it?”

“I don’t remember,” She looked lost, vulnerable. Breaking.

“It’s not what they said it would be, is it?” Finn asked her. “The things we’re ordered to do aren’t right. Well...get a name, that’s the first step.” Finn turned and shot at the grate with her blaster, melting a hole in it, and then shouldered RK-514’s gun and ducked through it.

“Wait!” She called. “Then what?”

“Find something worth fighting for,” Finn told her, and dropped down into the first level below the city. Into the sewer.

Sludge water spurted out of multiple chutes into the rushing, repulsive stream. Finn fell flat on his face on the stone banks, meeting a womp rat’s beady eyes when he looked up. It’s whiskers touched his face before it scurried off. “Ugh!”

Finn made his way through the maze of tunnels back toward the city center, stopping cold when he met a message scrawled on a wall in glow paint. It was a stencil mock-up of the trooper program advertisements, the block letters JOIN NOW with the First Order symbol, except that a large, looping ‘DON’T’ was scrawled above it, along with an arrow.

“Might as well,” Finn said to himself, and followed the arrow down a tight side-tunnel, having to move sideways, boots splashing through the shallow water. He emerged onto a mid-level platform along the edge of a wide, abandoned containment center’s cell block. Its catwalks were outfitted into dry-lines for laundry and its units converted to living spaces. A thousand faces peered up at his sudden entrance, every creed and color and every age, from gangly teenagers to graying elders.

“Hi,” said a man standing on the same level of the containment center as Finn. “Stars, is it really you?”

“You know me?” Finn asked him.

“Of course! You were a trooper like us! You had a high profile exit, buddy. I’m Reed.”

Finn's heart felt suddenly swollen and heavy at the sound of another ex-trooper telling him his name. One he'd picked for himself like a treasure, like the treasure Poe had picked for Finn. “I like it.” Finn surveyed the crowds again. _You were a trooper like us._ “How many of you are there?”

“Ten thousand at least. Maybe more.”

“You have weapons?”

“Whole city’s got weapons. That’s what the Order’s afraid of. If a million of us rose up, they’d be finished.”

Finn looked at him, letting that idea sink in. “You’re right.” And then, “You got a comms system down here?”

Reed installed him on the railed walkway just outside the old prison’s command tower, in the center of the cell block, and fired up the comm system. He brought the microphone out -- a little silver disk -- and affixed it to the side of Finn’s neck. Finn looked out on the downtrodden faces below, peering up at him, waiting to see what another traitor -- someone like them in every way except for notoriety -- had to say to them. Finn took a deep breath, and spoke. “My name is Finn. The revolution starts here. Right now. The Resistance is on its way. We’ve planned an assault on the capital. The First Order rules by fear.” People exited their cell-homes, craning their necks to look up at him. “They strip us of ourselves and put us behind masks, to frighten their enemies, to frighten us, but they’re the ones who are scared! If we take the capital, the galaxy will join us!”

Below him, the ex-troopers began to hit their carefully collected personal items -- tools, tankards, wooden spoons, broom handles, on the rails of the catwalks. Hundreds, then thousands of people clanking their possessions together. Finn stood tall, his heart swelling with pride as he looked at them.

“Hey,” Reed whispered. “Are you really...you know. Show ‘em.”

Finn unclipped his saber from his belt, holding it aloft and igniting it above his head like a beacon. “Together we can fight back! Together we resist!” Finn cried, and a cheer went up in the hidden city.

  
  


Hux loomed over the prisoner strapped to the vertical torture rack of one of the Capitol Tower’s many interrogation rooms. He recognized her, of course. He still wore the indents of her teeth on the index finger of his right hand.

He was now idly running that hand, the one she’d scarred, over a set of implements laid out for him, pressing it down on them when he saw he was shaking still. He tried to push all thoughts of Ren from his mind. They wouldn’t serve him now. He had a goal here, and obtaining it was part of ensuring that he and Ren both survived this day. If he got to engage in a bit of revenge along the way, all the better. It was one of his favorite pastimes. Perhaps it would calm his nerves. “Comfortable?” he asked.

“Yeah, I have one of these at home.” She told him, eyes narrowed and nostrils flared in defiance.

Without looking at her, Hux said, “You’ve changed the Dreadnought’s signature codes so that we can’t trace it. Give me the new codes.”

“You know, they told me to pick something easy to remember, like Life Day, but….”

“You think this is funny,” Hux’s face twisted into a snarl. “Very well.” He picked up a thin vibroblade on a pen-handle, igniting it and waiting for it to glow ember-hot. He held it up to Rose’s face to make her flinch. It was barely perceptible, stubborn as she was, but there. She thinned her lips, steeling herself for pain in the spot the blade’s heat scorched her skin, and he smiled at her.

He instead brought the blade down to her shackled right fist, plunging it into the side of her index finger and dragging it down, searing a burning line into her hand. She bit down on her scream, turning it into a choked cry. “Now,” said Hux, and waited for her to meet his eyes again. “I’d have done that even if you gave me the codes straight away, I confess. It’s only fair.” He held the blade up again, turning his hand so that his scar was visible to her. “But you can save yourself greater pain.”

  
  


The filthy streets of Coruscant’s lower levels, teeming with clandestine meetings in the dark, emptied as the first pink rays of dawn shone down on them. R2-D2 and BB-8 wandered together through them, occasionally beeping at each other. R2 had much to say to the other droid, contrasting this Coruscant with the one he had known long ago.

They turned a corner and came upon a towering AT walker standing over a burning tank, two First Order pilots inside scanning the wreckage of the lower vehicle.

Suddenly, a form jumped gracefully from one of the junked-out lower levels of the surrounding skyscrapers, just above the AT. It landed and ignited a blue saber -- Finn! BB-8 burpled happily and rolled out into the street.

Finn cut through the lock on the entry hatch to the AT and pulled it open. “Now!” He cried. Twenty other human forms, clad in mismatched attire still including scattered and repurposed pieces of trooper armor painted with colorful designs, shot grappling mag-links onto the AT and swung aboard. Finn peered into the hatch, meeting the faces of the pilots within, and said, “You will leave this machine peacefully now, and go home.” The pilots repeated his words exactly, as if in a trance, and climbed awkwardly out of the cockpit before realizing that they were up in the air. Finn pointed his hands at them and concentrated, closing his eyes, and then lowered them gently to the ground. The pilots blinked and looked around them in surprise, and then went on their way, wandering the streets on foot.

“Load up!” One of Finn’s companions said, crawling into the cockpit of the AT. The vehicle’s side panels slid open and the fighters swung themselves into it, taking their places. The AT began its walk forward down the boulevard, kicking the burning tank out of its way. Finn stayed kneeling on the top of it, saber at the ready.

All around the street from the surrounding alleys, more armed people poured out, joining the AT’s march toward the Capitol Tower. Escorting it, weapons held high. BB-8 and R2-D2 rolled along with them, R2 chirping out a merry marching tune.

Two TIE fighters droned around a building up ahead, facing off with this disturbance, and the AT shot them out of the sky.

  
  


Leia’s shuttle descended onto Aargau, passing through wide vents in the planet’s surface belching earth-colored steam, docking at the sprawling complex of the Aargau Cantina Club, the busiest bar in the Core Worlds.

She wore a black robe today, hooded and with a net of jewels over her face. A trio of drunken young First Order officers stumbled past her on her way out of the club. Two of them held up the blitzed third, singing as they walked. She resisted the urge to influence them to turn in for the night.

Inside, she maneuvered through the midst of the enemy. The club was smoke-filled and mirrored, lined with rich red velvets. The ceiling boasted stalactites of hanging crystals that glowed soft white, the only light in the space. First Order officers on leave filled every table, smoking and drinking. Laughing. Carrying on with lives of luxury that they’d been barred from in the Order’s infancy, when it had languished in the Outer Rim in the days of the New Republic.

Leia knew without listening in on their thoughts that each and every one of them felt this was only right. They’d been told from birth it was their due, after all, to cast out the Republic and take their reward. For these officers, many still bearing the marks of childhood malnutrition or pox, the galaxy was very much changed for the better now. But for so many, it was worse. Leia resolved to herself again, as she often did, that when this war was over...this war, profiting the rich more than peace had as Canto Bight sold its weapons to both the Resistance and the First Order...the system they would build would be a better one. One that would not leave a class of people trodden beneath its working mechanisms to despair...or to someday bite back.

She found him at the very back table as she’d known she would. Lando Calrissian dismissed his table of guests at her approach and had a Twi’lek server draw the curtain around his booth. The table was covered in credits.

“A man in his element,” she said, letting the next of jewels over her face fall to her neck.

“Leia,” Lando smiled wide, taking her hand and kissing it.

“Alright, alright.”

“You shouldn’t be seen here.”

“For your sake or mine?”

“Both. Can I get you anything?” He waved over the server already, ordering her preferred tea without waiting for her answer. “The clientele are mostly First Order, but what can I do? The grip of this empire is tighter than the last, and a man’s gotta live.”

“I need your help,” Leia told him.

“Leia,” he said again, wary this time.

“We need ships,” Leia pressed. “Pilots. You know every smuggler in the galaxy--”

“Look, I promised Han that I would take care of you if something happened…”

“Oh, _you_ would take care of me?” Leia asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Splattering yourself on the machine of the First Order trying to dent it isn’t what he wanted for you.”

“Lando, the galaxy needs you.”

“We won a war together once already and what good did it do? The great wheel of the galaxy turned and another power came out on top, more vicious than the one before.”

“We proved it can be done.”

“Leia, you know I’d do anything for you, but this? If you get a signal out uninterrupted I’ll see what I can do. People will come if you call. If it’s just me...I’m sorry.”

  
  


The door whooshed open, and Hux straightened up from the pattern he’d been carving, Rose’s shrieks fading into heaving breaths.

“Chancellor,” General Phasma addressed him. “There’s an insurrection in the capital. Word has spread to other districts.”

“Decimate them.” Hux said automatically. “Deploy all forces.”

“Sir… their leader is a former FN unit. And he is aided by a regiment’s worth of our own. Fellow traitors.”

Hux’s face twitched. Beside him, Rose looked up at the General, alert at the sound of this news despite her agony, determined to listen to anything that came next.

“Impossible,” Hux hissed.

“We are dispensing additional units to handle the revolt,” said Phasma.

“ _NO_. No. Recall all FN units from active duty,” Hux ordered.

“Sir?”

“If there is a flaw in their programming we must correct it. I won’t lose more of them. Recall them now. Deploy more mercenaries.”

“They’re undisciplined. And expensive.” Phasma cautioned. She was protective of the trooper program in a different way than Hux, the sole area they clashed. He was fond of the program, she of the troopers.

Hux set down the vibroblade, unwilling to continue the conversation in front of Rose. He steered Phasma out of the room, letting the door close behind them, and walked her over to the tower windows. This floor was below the cloud cover, and Hux took in the bedlam below -- the seething march making its way down Imperial Boulevard, the red-plated war machines taking their places in Monument Square to defend the Capitol Tower. “Put an end to this. I don’t care what it costs.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hux turned on his heel and walked toward the War Room, ordering two troopers to transfer the prisoner in the interrogation room to cell block 6. Under the severe look he gave them, they rushed to obey.

Rose let herself droop bonelessly in her constraints as soldiers entered the room, eyes closed and head lolling to the side.

“He wants her in maximum security,” one of the troopers intoned to the other in their distorted helmet-voice as they freed her wrists and ankles.

“This little thing? In block 6?” the other trooper responded.

Rose slumped forward, dead weight, and let herself be dragged between them to the door. She peeked from the corner of her eyes once the door slid open, sighting a stun-stick on one of their belts. She twisted suddenly in their grip, summoning the last of her strength, and grabbed it from the trooper’s holster. She jammed the stun-stick between the torso and hip plates of each trooper’s armor in one fluid moment, and was free.

“So long, boys,” she rasped at their stunned forms, and took off, holding a hand to her left clavicle where Chancellor Hux had gifted her with half of the First Order symbol, burned into her skin beneath her shirt. The pain was already fading but the scar would remain. She buttoned it back up with a grimace.

  
  


Rey continued through this approximation of Starkiller, feeling with each passing moment that sense of wrongness intensify. It was as though the land in the periphery of her vision was not what it ought to be. The trees grew lax when she wasn’t looking at them and their forms ran together, straightening up again into trees once she looked. The whispering wind was picking up, cutting through her and chilling her through her armor, pulling her hair.

Snow flew up into the gale, blurring her vision. Voices echoed, voices she’d almost forgotten, and then she was back in the warm, bright sands of the Jakku desert, running after the receding forms of her parents.

“Wait! _Come back!_ ” she screamed, reaching out to them. “Wait for me... _PLEASE COME BACK!_ ” They did not heed her. She slipped in her pursuit, falling to her knees. The sand kicked up, losing its color, becoming snow again.

Rey breathed harshly in the returned cold, tears prickling on her face. She jumped to her feet and ignited her lightsaber, screaming into this strange void, her dual blades flashing as she cut the nearest tree down in one swing. It fell, the sound too muted even for the snowy land. Anger burned in her eyes.

Kylo Ren walked as well through the snow. Rey was close, he’d heard her scream, though it was swallowed by the void, echoing strangely, and he couldn’t yet place her. The wind which had been picking up, throwing snow, suddenly died. His vision cleared. There was something ahead.

A house in the woods. A house he knew, though it didn’t belong here. Kylo approached it. He neared the door, reaching out, afraid to touch it. He didn’t have to. Han Solo threw the door wide, standing in the doorway, looking at his son just as he had in the oscillator room on Starkiller Base.

“What are you doing, Ben?” he asked.

“Ben is dead,” Kylo told him, not for the first time.

Han Solo glanced behind himself at the once-familiar forms of the Organa home, the holofeed playing live video of gamblers' tables in Hutt space and the kettle on in the kitchen for Kylo's mother, and then turned back, closing the door on himself slightly, obscuring Kylo's view. “Your mother can’t see you here. Not like that.”

Kylo’s hand came up to his metal cheek and he blinked his inflamed eyes reflexively, hurt, before he remembered himself. “I’m not coming back. I have a greater destiny. I have unequaled power. Neither of you understand.”

“That’s not true, Ben. You have one equal.” Han’s words were a deep blow. “And your mother understands more than anyone.”

“She sent me away.”

“She loves you.”

“She’s afraid of me.”

Han eyed Kylo’s darksaber in his hand. “Give me that, son.”

“You know I can’t.”

“I want to help.”

“You’ve helped enough,” Kylo found himself backing away from his father as Han walked forward. “Stay back.”

“You did it once, you can do it again. Or can’t you?” Han said, throwing his arms wide, his eyes full of pity.

Kylo fled from him, running away into the snow. When he turned back the house was gone. He breathed hard, bending over, resting his hands on his knees. The scavenger was near. Pulling himself up, he moved on.

  
  


The AT, Finn perched upon its helm, made its way down Imperial Boulevard, joining the citizens protesting there, fighting ineffectively against armed troopers. The Capitol Tower was in sight.

Finn stood upon the moving walker, taking in the sight of the Coruscanti people’s revolt. Suddenly, from his side, a threat. He turned before he knew what it was, merely sensing it, and was met with a stormtrooper hurtling toward him using their jet pack. He brought his saber up on instinct and then flung it out wide again, unwilling to skewer this trooper. SLAM! The trooper tackled him, and Finn held on, dragging them both down in a spinning descent.

They landed on the trooper’s back, and at once they were grappling with Finn, unharmed by the fall. The trooper rolled them and their positions were reversed. Finn struggled to land a debilitating blow on their armored form. “You will release me,” he tried, but his concentration was broken by their continuing struggle.

They were interrupted by the sound of a blaster priming. The trooper sat up, scrambling off of Finn. A unit of stormtroopers surrounded them, guns at the ready.

“Stand down,” the leader ordered through their modulator.

“Easy, easy,” Finn murmured, holding a hand up to them, palm out.

“Not you,” they said, swiveling their blaster to point at the trooper who had tackled Finn. “Him. Stand down. Kneel. Hands up.” The trooper obeyed the commands. “Helmet off.” Hesitantly, they obeyed this too. He was an older brunette man, graying at the temples. The leader of this unit removed her helmet. It was RK-514.

“Thank you,” said Finn.

“Riya,” she told him.

“I like it. Thank you, Riya.” Her entire unit removed and threw their helmets to the side, revealing faces as diverse as those of the prison-dwellers. Riya leaned down and helped Finn to his feet.

“How can I assist you?”

Finn thought for a moment. “Got a good comms unit?”

  
  


“General,” Connix hailed Leia, saluting. “I’ve got a message from a First Order device. Finn says he’s alive, and he has an army ready to storm the Capitol Tower. They need reinforcements.”

“Has the Falcon checked in?”

“Yes. Chewie and Poe piloting it.”

“Rey? Rose?”

“I don’t know, General. I’m sorry.”

Leia sighed. “With a broken beacon and without Lando, all we’ve got is what’s on this ship. You can’t win a war with a hundred pilots.” She walked with Connix to the Eclipse’s communications array, meaning to reach out to Poe.

Connix interrupted her thoughts. “General, I think that if Finn says he has an army on the ground we need to put our pilots in the sky and back him up. The rebels fought the Empire and won. You showed us we can do it. That was your war. This one is ours. Let us fight it.”

Leia considered Connix’s words, and looked around at the crew’s faces. Young, so young. But also determined and ready. “Set our course for Coruscant,” she told them. “Ready all weapons and light ships. This is a full assault.”

In the _Eclipse_ ’s docking bay, pilots ran to their ships in their orange jumpsuits. Droids lowered themselves into place. Soldiers loaded onto transports, shouldering their blaster rifles.

With a heaving lurch, the Dreadnought rocketed into hyperspace.

  
  


The well lay before him, a dark hole in the snow, fathomless. Kylo approached it, feeling power radiate through the air. But not from in front of him. “I knew you’d come,” he said, and turned to face her.

Her appearance surprised him. He’d not seen her like this. In their connections she had projected the vision of herself from before, from Ach-To. The woman before him was not a student. This was a seasoned warrior. She wasn’t stunned at his face in turn; he’d shown it to her.

“Can you feel it, the power of this place?” he asked, and then winced as she dug into his mind. It wasn’t a sensation he was often on the receiving end of. “Get out of my head. You won’t like what you find.”

“You’re in pain,” she said. “You still wear a mask. You don’t take this one off. Even for him.”

Hux, she meant. Kylo knew. Images were called forward, dug out of his mind with unskilled fingernails, drawing blood. Every night Kylo had lain awake next to Hux, observing him in the safety of his sleep, feeling things no Sith should. Images she had no right to see. His anger with her flared alongside anger at himself, one and the same. “ _OUT_ ,” he growled, and tried to push her back with the Force. She withstood it, standing strong. He hissed at her, “I’m stronger than Luke Skywalker. Stronger than _Anakin_.”

“But you’re still afraid.”

“Of what? You?”

“Yes,” she said, circling him like a predator, coming between him and well of Mortis. “Because I’m you. Only the Dark side’s broken you. It’s left you hollow. I’m what you could be.”

“You’re no one,” Kylo raged at her. “You blame me for your life on Jakku? For your drunkard parents who left you behind like an empty bottle? You’re nothing, but you could be great, with me….”

“No,” Rey said, taking a deep, calming breath. “I’m not afraid to face the truth. You can’t weaken me with it now. No one is no one.”

Kylo faltered, changing tactics. “I’m not here for you, Rey.”

“You murdered Han Solo...Luke gave himself to stop you...you’ve ended countless lives…”

“All I want,” he pointed at her, raising his fist up to do it, “is that well.”

Rey ignited her dual lightsaber. “Then you’ll have to kill me.”

Kylo looked at her for a long moment, and then ignited his darksaber. “I know.” He attacked, driving her back. The vision of Mortis blurred and faded, leaving them in the lobby of the Capitol Tower. He drove her back through the doors and down the steps, onto the shining silver platform of Monument Square.

There, she fought back, both of them far more powerful than the last time they met. Mortis coalesced around them again, the depths of the well whispering as their blades hissed off of one another.

  
  


High above Coruscant’s atmosphere, the _Eclipse_ appeared from lightspeed. First Order ships orbited below, protecting the capital from space. Leia took her seat on the bridge.

“Send the fleet planetside at once,” she ordered. “Surprise is the only advantage we have.” And then, to Connix specifically, “Alert the Falcon.”

X-wings poured out of the Dreadnought’s massive hangar bay, falling like diving hawks toward Coruscant, exchanging fire with the Order sentinels below. The Falcon rocketed into view and dived down in sync with the last squadron of x-wings. Chewie was piloting, struggling but succeeding to hold course with Poe in the gunner’s seat. Poe eliminated Order ships with bursts of precise fire, and then the way was clear. Leia watched on grimly as the first of the Resistance ships broke atmo.

In the mid-levels of the Capitol Tower, below the cloud cover, stood a command deck similar to the bridge of a star destroyer. It was here that Hux stationed himself, his placement and posture nearly identical to the stance he had assumed on the _Finalizer_ , even down to Mitaka’s presence on his left.

“Sir,” Mitaka said. “We’ve detected a ship in orbit. One of ours but with unrecognized signature codes.”

“It’s the stolen Dreadnought,” Hux said. “Summon all destroyers to the Capitol. This is the Resistance’s last attempt. We can end this war today.”

Above, on the bridge of the Eclipse, Leia said, “Weapons status?”

“Laser primed,” Connix shouted.

“Alright. Take us down.”

  
  


On Imperial Boulevard, the AT walker and the new Resistance ground army were nearly to the square stretched out below the silver dais and the battling forms of Rey and Kylo Ren. The oncoming rebels numbered in the tens of thousands, blasters and clubs ready.

Finn marched out front, flanked by Riya and her rebel troopers. Reed yelled from the cockpit of the walker, using its broadcast speaker. “Rise up! You’re free!”

Small bands of citizens were appearing from alleys on both sides, a trickle of sentients from all planets building into a stream and then a river. At the entrance to the square stood regiments of soldiers armored in red, similarly-built tanks and walkers behind them. General Phasma stood at their head, her chrome armor gleaming in the morning sun.

The march came to a halt. “Stand your ground!” Finn yelled. Phasma’s mercenaries fired, raining plasma down on Finn and the rebels. Finn brought up his saber, spinning it and deflecting blaster bolts from himself and the ones closest to him. Throughout the rebel parade, people ran for cover, or returned fire if they were able. A squadron of TIE fighters appeared overhead, their characteristic drone nearly deafening as they approached. Their undersides blinked red with TIE bombs ready to deploy, to crater the boulevard and easily halve the Resistance where they stood in their first pass.

Suddenly, a fleet of x-wings dove in from the sky, maneuvering through the trench of the boulevard and firing on the TIE fighters, spinning them into explosive collisions with each other high above the threshold where the bombs would harm the sentients below, like fireworks at a Life Day parade.

Finn cheered, and the ground army cheered with him. Resistance transports from the _Eclipse_ landed wherever space was made for them, and opened their hatches. Soldiers with blaster rifles poured forth, followed by stolen First Order ATs and attack speeders. Just as the ex-troopers had done to their armor, these machines had been painted in bright colors, all sporting the sigil of the Resistance in red or orange.

“We are the Resistance!” said Reed from his speaker.

“We’re the Resistance!” Riya echoed.

“All of us!” shouted Finn.

In the square, Phasma and her red-shelled mercenaries primed their weapons.

  
  


Lightsabers clashed in Monument Square in flashes of gold and black. Kylo and Rey fought mercilessly.

“I could have been your teacher,” said Kylo. “You’re weakening. Your heart is a dying light, an ember falling into ash.”

She doubted herself, and did not bring up her blade in time to block his next attack. He struck her, a wicked blow across her face that sent her reeling, the wound across her eyes instantly cauterized, smoking. Rey screamed, clutching at her face, blinded.

“Goodbye, scavenger,” said Kylo, watching Rey go to her knees in the snow and fall forward. He powered down his darksaber and approached the well then, going to his knees to look into the heart of Mortis…. It was empty, just a hole in the ground, not whispering now. “No...no,” he murmured, lips trembling.

Luke’s voice by his side. “You’ve lost, Ben.”

“You’re dead!” Ben screamed at him. “All the Jedi are ghosts!”

“Once again, you have not bested the last Jedi. I’ve trained two padawans after you, and the galaxy teems with people attuned to the Force. There will always be others. The Dark side has failed you, just as it failed my father.”

“Your father was weak!”

“Love saved him. His love for his family. I wish it could save you. You chose hate.”

“I chose power.” Kylo ignited his darksaber again and attacked, but Luke caught his blade in the blue glow of his bare human hand, stopping it in midair, all of Kylo Ren’s strength halted.

“Strike me down,” Luke said with a smile, “and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

Kylo struggled against him, face red, eyes wild, teeth bared, “I’m more powerful than any Skywalker has ever been.”

“So is she,” Luke said, his gaze looking beyond Kylo, and he vanished. Kylo’s momentum tumbled him forward into the snow and he pushed himself up, facing Rey.

She stood, blind and bruised, but still strong. “The old Masters were wrong,” she said. “I will not deny my anger, but I will not reject my love. I am the Darkness and the Light.” She ignited her saber.

Kylo charged. “ _It’s my birthright! My destiny!_ ”

Rey met him and fought blind, guided by the Force.

  
  


Above Coruscant, the Eclipse began its descent behind the Falcon. Suddenly there was a WHOOM which shook the bridge as a craft arrived from lightspeed. It immediately fired, lasers rocking the _Eclipse_ ’s deflector shields. It would break through if the onslaught continued.. The Dreadnought was pulled up, halting its path to the planet and turning to return fire.

“Star destroyer _Finalizer_ advancing,” Connix said.

“Engage starboard cannons!” Leia ordered. The gun ports on the starboard side of the ship opened, the ion cannons within extending and firing upon the Finalizer. It’s lasers halted as it swung out of the cannons’ path. “Come about!”

The Eclipse was maneuvered to face the destroyer, swinging on its axis and unleashing hell. A star destroyer was no match for a Dreadnought, and the Finalizer stuttered under the barrage and then exploded.

Cheers of victory went up on the bridge at the sight of the ship that had haunted their bases over the years blown to bits, but it was short-lived. WHOOM -- ten more destroyers arrived at once, each of them targeting the Dreadnought.

“Fire!” Leia cried. But against so many enemies her ship was large and unwieldy, so massive as to make star destroyers seem as fast as x-wings as they zipped out of the way of the Dreadnought’s blasts and returned fire. The deflector shields struggled, alarm klaxons blaring.

Below, in the capital, resistance x-wings weaved through Coruscanti skyscrapers, firing on TIE fighters at window-level. It was a dogfight, TIEs returning fire, chasing the x-wings through spiraling freefalls and inversions. Through the windows of the high-rises, Coruscant's high society watched with bated breath, clutching glasses of champagne. For most of them, it was their first look at the war that they had personally financed these last many years. The war that had profited their bank accounts and supported their lifestyles here in the Core Worlds.

Over Imperial Boulevard, an x-wing was struck and crashed directly into a tower through its transparisteel walls. Shards rained down on the march occurring below, the bigger pieces demolished by rapid-fire from another Resistance ship before they could crush the foot soldiers. The crashed x-wing slid through the floor of the building, crushing everything in its path from the crystal chandeliers to the gold-plated support beams and the bejewelled occupants themselves. It came to rest directly on top of the twisted body of Lord Gherlid, and exploded, causing a chain reaction that caught the whole floor of the tower aflame.

One squadron of x-wings made it to the Capitol Tower and rained plasma lasers on the structure, igniting fires in several stories before swooping away for another pass, pursued by TIE fighters hot on their tail.

Below, in Monument Square, Finn’s army challenged General Phasma’s mercenaries. Finn Force-pushed the blockade, throwing soldiers back and leading a charge into the occupied square. Finn sought out Phasma personally, spinning his saber to deflect the bolts from her silver blaster until he was too close for her to continue to use a ranged weapon. She threw it aside and drew a shining chrome vibro-battleaxe from her back, switching it on. The sharp blade glowed hot as an ember, smoking and spitting. She had advantages in height and sheer brute strength over Finn, but he was no longer the trooper she’d known. He met her every move as if he were reading her mind, fierce determination in his eyes. He _was_ reading her mind, Phasma realized with a sickening lurch.

“ _Traitor!_ ” She screamed as she parried a blow from Finn’s saber, the kyber blade hissing against her axe. “You were one of mine! My own!”

“Think you’re the biggest warrior out here still?” Finn countered. “Just like you were when the Order picked you up? When _he_ invited you into his schemes?”

“You don’t know anything!”

“Hux should’ve returned you to whatever wasteland his father found you on. Parnassos?”

“ _SHUT UP!_ ” Phasma swung for him viciously and he dodged, barely breaking a sweat.

“You’re a dog looking for a master,” Finn hissed. “Whichever offers you the shiniest choke chain. _Armitage_ outbid them all, huh? How did it feel to destroy your savior for him? I can see it now. All that was left of Brendol was translucent bones and bits of gore and hair.”

“I’ve come _too far_ to let you win,” Phasma screamed, swinging again. “ _You die here, FN!_ ” Finn blocked that one, holding her fast with his saber.

“You tortured us until all that was left of our minds was loyalty to the Order,” said Finn. “But your loyalty is to yourself. More than to the Order. Even more than to Hux. You helped him program us to take plasma bolts to the brain for him, but you’d leave him for dead to save your skin, wouldn’t you? You don’t want to think so, but you would. You stand behind a disposable shield of stolen people and command them to their deaths.”

Finn’s saber at last cut through the glowing blade of Phasma’s axe, rendering it useless. She snapped the handle off into a point and stabbed at him with it, renewing their battle as the Falcon’s shadow fell upon them.

  
  


Rose snuck through the Capitol Tower, jumping aside into an alcove as officers rounded the corner and walked briskly past her. One of them, his uniform bars designating him as a commander, was sternly telling the other, “I need an update from the tech working the hyperdrive control server.”

Rose stifled a gasp. There might be a way to cease function of all the First Order ships at once. But first, the sure bet: the transmissions jammer. Shutting that down would enable the Resistance to call the galaxy for help uninterrupted. Rose tiptoed her way down hallways, reaching dead ends and turning back, her heart pounding. Every additional second spent wandering was a risk.

At last she reached a window overlooking a massive glowing grid of servers in a hexagonal sub-basement. The spine of the First Order. Within that room lay both the transmission jammer and the circuitry for this ‘hyperdrive control server’, Rose was sure of it.

She jogged over to the door and pulled her collection of confiscated First Order ID bars from her jumpsuit, trying them on the locking mechanism until one worked. _Thank you, Thanisson._

She crept down the black durasteel stairs into the room, the massive servers standing up like the walls of a maze. Within them she heard moving voices -- roving techs checking the function of the various machines. She removed a grated panel from the floor and slipped in, lowering the lid back down on top of herself and scurrying beneath the servers like the mine-rat she was accused of being on Hays Minor. The servers continued underground, access ports glowing softly in the gloom.

Rose wound her way through the maze until she came to rest below two techs in their gray jumpsuits, talking amongst themselves.

“They’re bitching about these hyperdrives again,” one was grumbling, adjusting his oversized glasses on his face and running a hand through his outrageous blond curls.

_Bingo_ , thought Rose, plugging herself in to the console below the floor.

“You think the hyperdrives are bad,” said the other tech, this one with lank red hair far too long to fit regulation and clicking bionic eyes, “Armitage won’t shut up about this transmission jammer after they got one through.”

“Neither will you,” the blond tech said fondly.

“Well...how did they?”

“Here you go again.”

Rose stifled a gasp and quietly opened a panel on the server the red-headed tech was working on above her. _Yes! It’s easy for once. This is like my own little personal office_ , she thought. She tapped out a message to Leia, and set to work.

  
  


In the middle of Monument Square, Finn and Phasma were interrupted by the Falcon landing nearly on top of them. They each rolled out of the way as it’s loading ramp came down with a hiss and clank.

Chewie and Poe tumbled out of it and into the fray, weapons raised. Poe ran to Finn’s aid, shooting plasma bolts at General Phasma. They glanced off her armor, driving her back, though they weren’t high-caliber enough to pierce her. Phasma tripped over a corpse behind her as she staggered back and fell flat on her mirrored back, losing her grip on her sharpened durasteel pole. Disarmed.

Finn advanced on her, and then his wrist comm beeped, Leia’s voice crackling through.

“I have a message from Rose, on the inside,” she said.

“Rose is on the inside?” Finn asked, distracted.

“She’s disabled the transmission jammer. It’s ours. We’ve sent out the Resistance signal with our coordinates, all channels. She can stop their ships too.”

Phasma, seeing an out, righted herself and fled. She pushed a mercenary from their red speeder-bike and mounted it herself, racing off.

“Shit!” Finn cried.

“Finn, are you still there?”

“Yes! Yes, what is it? What do I do?”

Leia’s voice sounded again from his comm. She was speaking slowly, every word vitally important. “Rose needs the hyperdrive keys in R2’s memory. There should be a terminal for droids to patch in somewhere around the base of the tower, have BB-8 scan for it. R2 will have a direct connection to Rose from any of the terminals, got it?”

Finn cursed again, dodging blaster fire. “Okay, yeah, got it! R2! Where’s R2?” He sighted R2 and BB-8 behind a flipped First Order tank, and their trio -- Finn, Poe, Threepio -- ran to the droids. “Come on buddy,” Finn told R2, “We need to get you to the Tower base. There’s a terminal...BB can scan for it.”

R2 beeped, determined.

“For glory?” C-3PO repeated, incredulous and annoyed as he always was with R2. They trekked to the tower base, Finn and Poe laying down covering fire, but before BB-8 could begin his scan R2 was hit by an errant blaster bolt and halted, silent and scorched-black, his head smoking. “R2?” Threepio asked. “R2! No!”

Thinking fast, Finn removed R2’s memory drive and inserted it into BB-8. “None of this matters if we don’t get Rose these codes.”

BB-8 took off, ready for duty. He rolled around the tower base, weaving through explosions, skirmishes, and AT legs as he scanned for the terminal. Poe watched BB-8 depart, eyes misting with pride, and then was brought back to himself as he was targeted by a mercenary. He swung back into the fight, returning fire on them. As the mercenary advanced, a bowcaster bolt shot into their helmet with a sickly THWACK.

“Chewie! Here to join the party?” said Poe.

Chewbacca brayed, joining their huddle.

“We have to fall back somewhere with more cover,” Finn said.

"I can’t leave him!” Threepio cried, clutching R2’s dormant form. Chewbacca roared and picked up R2’s shell, carrying it with him as they made for some rubble along the tower base that offered them better protection.

  
  


Leia watched as more and more star destroyers arrived from lightspeed with shuddering WHOOMs. The entire First Order fleet, called home to defend the capital. She thought suddenly of Luke, of Han. They’d fought together in their youth, and again now. Just as Lando had said, they’d won a war once already. But the wheel had kept turning, and this new war had taken her husband and then her brother from her. She stood alone at the helm now, watching the end approach. Responsible for the young lives that had pledged themselves to her cause. She couldn’t let them throw themselves away, any more than they already had.

“More ships arriving from the Outer Rim,” Connix said.

“Prepare to retreat,” Leia decided. A lost war held less weight than any more lost Resistance lives. She could almost hear Poe now, asking _then what was it all for?_ “Alert forces on-planet. Anyone with the means of evacuation must do so at once.”

“General, these aren’t First Order ships.”

“What?” Leia stared out the viewport at the starfield ahead with renewed intensity, watching a thousand ships emerge from hyperspace, all makes and models, and all heavily modified. A massive fleet of smugglers and thieves flying their personal cruisers. In the lead was the _Lady Luck_. Lando. Leia felt tears come to her eyes as Connix patched him in and his voice sounded throughout the bridge.

“Got your call. Thought you could use a few scoundrels,” Lando laughed merrily. His fleet jumped into action, laying waste to the Order’s destroyers. Three went up in flames in quick succession. On the bridge of the _Eclipse_ , Leia watched as the star destroyers that had been waging war on her ship and her men began a retreat as tricked-out smuggler ships pursued them, soaring away to hide and regroup later.

Connix appeared at her shoulder. “They’re getting away! They’ll be back if we don’t end this today.”

“Even with Lando’s men, we don’t have the firepower to ground them,” Leia said. “Rose is our only hope now.”

  
  


The scoundrel fleet broke atmo above the Coruscanti capital, raining fire on the TIE fighters and the red-armored machines of the First Order.

Finn whooped, “Chewie, we got company!”

Chewbacca roared and beat his chest, hoisting his bowcaster up in greeting as the _Lady Luck_ soared overhead.

BB-8 beeped in excitement as his scanners found the terminal he sought. He rolled up to it and plugged in, sending the keycode data to the terminal that Rose had indicated with their usual sequence.

In the Capitol server room, the redheaded tech was livid, slamming a palm against his console. “This is impossible!” He cried, “It can’t be hacked!”

_No, but it can be re-wired right here, dumbass_ , Rose thought from beneath the server maze, focusing on the hyperdrive console now. Rose struggled, battling with the blond tech above for control as he tried to counter her moves at every turn. His friend gave up on his own console and turned to help. They were good, especially with the redhead peeking over the blond one’s shoulder and making suggestions in a timid voice, both of them cursing and the blond one adjusting his glasses more often than they needed it. But Rose was better.

“Done,” Rose whispered to herself as she used the data BB-8 had sent her and locked in her override. Then, she popped up from one of the grated panels, leveling her blaster at the two techs. They both screamed in surprise, the redhead jumping clear into the blond one’s arms, his eyes whirring rapidly to focus on Rose.

“It’s been a delight but I’ve got to get going,” she said. “Point me out of here and I won’t shoot you.” The blond one did. “Word to the wise, you might want to make yourself scarce. You’re on the losing team, friends.” Rose said, and bolted.

She found her way out of the halls of servers and took the stairs back up out of the room two at a time. People bustled around her as she ran down hallways, paying her no mind. She found her way to the lobby. Rose released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding as she threw open the front doors to the Capitol Tower and emerged into sunlight, even sunlight obscured by smoke and laser blasts. She hunched down even as she sprinted down the steps, dodging errant plasma bolts. Rey was locked in battle with Kylo Ren on the silver platform above the square, the both of them seeing nothing but each other. The platform had slid away from the steps, and Rose saw Finn and the others off to the side in the square below, sheltered behind some rubble. She jumped down to join them, spooking Poe.

“I did it,” she told them, “all their ships are down, and the transmissions blockade. It’s over.”

“Who’s gonna tell Ben that?” Poe muttered, hearing the clash of lightsabers go on above them.

As if summoned by Rose’s words, First Order ships entered the atmosphere, spinning down toward the planet’s surface in strangely graceful arcs, lights blinking in confused patterns. Pieces of them went up in flame as their officers attempted to restart their engines against Rose’s programming.The red-shelled mercenaries in the square halted and surrendered or fled, realizing their pay would no longer be forthcoming.

“Shit, all those ships are coming down! People will be crushed!” Finn cried.

“I took some liberties with the crash-landing directives,” Rose informed him. “Unless any of your people are in Coruscant’s casinos and ballrooms, they’ll be fine.”

“You really don’t like casinos,” said Finn.

  
  


The War Room watched a holographic representation of the battle closely, Hux issuing orders as the situation transformed before his eyes. It was, perhaps, unusual for a Chancellor to directly command military forces, but no one had the gall to protest a single syllable Hux uttered, his face rendered pale by the hologram of swooping ships and plasma fire, the blue reflecting in his eyes.

“How is this not over?” Hux hissed reaching up and swirling the hologram with one hand, speaking to himself more so than anyone crowded around him.

Mitaka answered anyway. “It’s the smuggler crafts, sir. Our fleet isn’t equipped to engage an enemy of that magnitude--”

“I mean _all of it_.”

An explosion rocked the building, rattling the fixtures and flickering the lights. The alarm klaxons blared, emergency lights coming to life as dust sifted down from the rafters.

“No it is. It’s over,” Hux murmured.

“What?” Mitaka paled beside him.

“It’s over,” Hux said again, louder, voice carrying through the command center. “Flee if you can. You’ll be tried and executed if you surrender.”

“Sir--”

“You have the bridge.” Hux said reflexively, turning on his heel to leave, Mitaka calling after him.

“The bridge? Sir? _Sir!_ ”

Hux left him there, his left hand coming up to caress the hilt of the saber he wore. He pulled it from his belt as he moved down through the building. The stairs swam with panicked sentients around him, people sprinting for escape. Fools. There was no escape. Hux exited the Capitol Tower, moving at his usual clipped pace down the broad stairway to Monument Square. He made the short jump to the hovering silver platform, his gait suggesting he was starting a scheduled patrol rather than walking straight into a vicious melee.

Kylo and Rey lunged at each other, each countering the other’s moves, evenly matched. They were two sides of the same brutal coin, Kylo’s blade shadow and Rey’s pure light. It was plainly a fight to the death. Hux stood at the edge of the square, drinking in Kylo’s form as he fought with First Order ships descending in smoke and flame behind him. Hux’s face was soft, eyes wide, not conscious of himself; completely outside himself as though his only concern were committing the scene to memory.

Rey took a vicious swing, and Kylo’s darksaber shattered at the hilt. It was destroyed along with the fingers of his right hand, cut straight across his palm. Kylo looked at it in disbelief, stumbling back on the square, falling to one knee. Rey stood over him, her face hard, blind eyes bright as if lit from within. Her entire form nearly seemed to glow, radiating the unfathomable living force within, not a vessel of power but a generator of it. She separated her dual saber, holding one blade out toward Kylo’s chest and the other up and ready, guarding her side where Hux stood. As though he offered her any threat. It was flattering, really, Hux thought.

Kylo glared up at her, teeth clenched and bared, yellow eyes furious with rage. The well of Mortis faded from his vision, replaced by the reality of the square. The power he felt didn’t fade away with the well. It pulsed through his blood, stronger than ever. “They were wrong,” He said, realization dawning. “The power of the well can’t be taken.”

Rey’s face changed. She was reading his thoughts as they appeared, but it wasn’t enough to save her. Kylo stretched out the open palm of his good hand and held her fast.

“It’s nothing compared to you,” Kylo said, and began to extract the living force from Rey just as he learned on Mustafar. Rey rose into the air as if lifted by her throat, her body slack, her weapons clattering to the ground. The energy flowed from her into Kylo’s open hand. Her skin dulled, graying, and she screamed.

Kylo stood tall, energized, his injuries bothering him no more. He was no longer weak, he thought, even accounting for the pieces of himself he’d lost along the way. He walked close to Rey, twisting his fist to squeeze the last of her life away. Rey gasped, chest heaving, heart pounding slowly, and gathered the rest of her waning strength. She reached out, offering Kylo her hand. “Ben...please….”

Beyond Coruscant’s atmosphere, on the bridge of the _Eclipse_ , Leia stumbled, clutching the railing to hold herself upright. Pain struck her like a hollowing in her bones. She spoke into the vastness of space beyond the transparisteel panes. “Ben.” Kylo paused, hearing the voice of his mother. Even with years between them he could never forget this voice. He felt her as though she stood at his shoulder now. He did not turn to look. He couldn’t bring himself to. Her voice whispered beside him. “Ben....”

Kylo shook his head as though that would rid him of this intercession. He looked around him at the Square and the destruction beyond. The end of the First Order. He wouldn’t need it, with this power. He could rule the galaxy without an army. Alone. His eyes met Hux’s and rested there. He thought, _I understand you, grandfather. I feel the very thing that destroyed you, that brought you low...why does it not make me feel weak? Rey...my twin. She’s everything in me I tried to kill. And Mom, and Hux...I love…._ He looked at Hux, his mutated eyes meeting the cold green he could see as clearly in his mind even across the galaxy, at Hux’s hand holding the hilt of his old saber, thumb resting on the activation switch. _‘I’ll drive it into my chest.’_ Kylo blinked at him, mouth coming open in wonder. _I love him. I love him and it doesn’t make me feel weak._ He looked back up at Rey’s outstretched hand, and took it.

The living force flowed back into her, both Light and Dark swirling within her as Kylo Ren was reduced to an empty shell. A man who had possessed great and terrible power from infancy, now without it for the first time. Frightened. Kylo and Rey collapsed into one another, each propping the other up on their knees, their foreheads touching. They pulled away, slowly, gazing at each other.

“Ben?” Rey asked.

“I...I don’t think so. No….no,” Kylo answered. He turned, eyes falling on Hux, and reached out to him with his destroyed palm. Hux prepared himself to feel the pinch around his spine, behind his navel, but the tugging of the Force didn’t come.

“I’m sorry,” said Rey, squeezing Kylo’s hand before she dropped it, standing shakily, blind eyes seeing nothing, flaring Force presence seeing everything. “It wasn’t the only path...but it was the better one.”

Hux walked close with halting steps, eyeing Rey cautiously. She nodded at him curtly, and he went to Kylo’s side, kneeling next to him. He stowed the old saber on his belt again and clasped Kylo’s face in his hands, fingers caressing the metal inset of his cheek still so new to Hux, and the faded scar he knew every inch of. Brown eyes looked up to meet him, and the sight of them drew tears from Hux.

“What?” Kylo asked, blinking slowly.

“Nothing,” Hux said, pulling Kylo in to kiss his forehead. “I missed you.” Night was falling. Rey turned, seeing someone behind her invisible to Hux. “Can you--” he murmured to Kylo.

“No.” Kylo looked at his hands, the half-hand, cauterized and smoking, and the whole one, and then up to where Rey was focused. His face was blank, wondering. “No, there’s nothing there.”

Rey turned, gazing into the spectral face of Luke Skywalker visible only to her. His eyes shone with pride. “You’ve found balance,” he said. “Like no other in history. You chose to embrace the Dark and the Light, and in doing so you’ve saved many more lives than that of yourself and the man Ben’s become. You are a Jedi, Rey. Not the Jedi of old, but what we should have been. And you and Finn will not be the last.”

“Thank you,” Rey told Luke, and he faded away with a familiar smile. Then, she turned back to Kylo and Hux. “You won’t come home,” she said to Kylo. Not a question, but a sad statement of fact.

“I can’t,” he said. “I’m not who she wants me to be.” Leia, Rey knew. Kylo wrapped an arm around Hux, holding him close. “And he’ll be killed. I can’t lose him.”

“No, enough bloodshed. No more,” Rey said, though her face clouded, her disgust and horror at the Starkiller warring with Kylo’s deep affection for him, which she could feel as though it were her own. “Take him, then, and go. Before I change my mind.”

Kylo struggled to his feet, pulling Hux up with him. “I can’t pilot the _Silencer_ without the Force.”

Rey looked to their side, to the grounded Falcon in the square. “It’s yours,” she said. “It’s what Han wanted...before…. Just go.”

Kylo ushered Hux away with him, and Hux shook him off, “It’s over,” he said hollowly, “We lost.”

“We need to go,” Kylo told him gently, as though he were reasoning with a stubborn child. “Argue with me on the ship, will you?”

Hux snapped at him, “ _No, it’s over_. Why live?”

“Because I need a hand,” Kylo said, holding his bisected palm up. Hux fixed him with a long, tired look. “The Falcon needs a co-pilot. Come on, being irreplaceable is all you’ve ever wanted, Hux.”

“What will we _do?_ ” Hux protested.

“Whatever you want,” Kylo said.

“ _Not_ whatever he wants, he’s awful,” Rey called from behind them.

Hux sighed and resumed walking beside Kylo, lowering himself fluidly from the platform and then letting Kylo, whose grip was compromised, step down onto his thigh and then to the ground below. They walked together to the piece of junk the Resistance called their best spacecraft, boarding it. Hux looked back up at the warrior who had torn his empire down. Their empire, his and Kylo Ren’s.

“Know anything about smuggling?” Kylo asked him as they settled into the pilot’s chairs and flipped switches, bringing the Falcon to life. Kylo flicked the dice hanging up above the ship’s console. “For good luck,” he explained. Hux laughed, an exhausted and shrill sound.

“Smuggling. Stars above, what a demotion. I can learn,” he said. The Falcon roared to life and shot up into the air. Kylo piloted it around the Capitol Tower, Hux leaning over to wrench the steering apparatus in the right direction when Kylo’s grip slipped. Together, they shot out into the stars.

The Resistance starbird rose on flags through the capital on Coruscant, and all throughout the galaxy. Beneath the Capitol Tower, within the square, thousands of citizens gathered, shouting as though at a Life Day parade. Finn swung Poe up into his arms and kissed him breathless. Rose jumped up and down, her arms thrust up to the sky, shouting with the rest of the revellers. Free. Rey leaped down from the silver platform, joining the crowded square. Wordlessly, she found her family and joined them in a group hug, her lightsaber stowed on her back, a wide smile below her serene white eyes.

  
  


Leia watched from her windows as Resistance soldiers and freed citizens mingled in the streets below, working together to clean them. She turned away, back to the droids in her company.

“How’s he coming along?”

“Oh!” said Threepio, “A quick cycle through his memory banks and he’ll be his old self again. I hope. I don’t know what I’d do without him if I’m being quite honest, I--”

“He’ll be fine,” Leia reassured C-3PO. She left her seat by the window to pick up R2’s memory drive, rescued from BB-8. She knelt in her blue nightgown to insert the drive, and R2 beeped, alive. As his files catalogued into chronological order, from present to past, they displayed in his hologram function, ending with the face of Luke Skywalker looking into his faceplate in the basement of the family home on Tatooine. Tears sprung to Leia’s eyes at the sight of her brother’s face as it had been when she first met him.

“Thank you, R2,” she said. R2-D2 beeped at her affectionately, and the picture winked out.

Leia moved on to her balcony, watching the revelers below, the meteor shower above. It was peaceful. There was deep peace now like she’d never felt. It covered the galaxy, permeating her soul. Balance.

Most of the remnants of the Order had been rounded up, absent the Chancellor and whatever remained of her son. There were whispers of two men in a junked out ship faster than anything, sharpshooters travelling Wild Space together, one of them redheaded. If it was true, they hadn’t yet left a trace reliable enough to follow. There were trials commencing for the First Order officers that were captured. Rey was their staunchest defender, a bastion of peace and forgiveness. Like Luke was. Leia never had it in her heart to forgive their father, but Luke did. He forgave the man a hundred times over the moment it was asked for.

Rey carried forward that forgiveness in the Light, but altogether she was something new, something the galaxy had never seen. She stood tall, clad in her black warrior’s gear with her pearlescent eyes held high, seeing nothing, seeing all. Her resistance shook the stars. She had already begun to gather disciples, starting on Jakku. She and Finn set to training a new generation of Jedi together, passing on to them what they’d learned. They moved like sunbeams and shadows, Light and Dark passing through them in equal measure, not vessels of power but generators of it. Leia knew in her heart that together the new Jedi would keep peace and justice in the galaxy.

  
  


The Falcon orbited a green planet in deep Wild Space, largely uninhabited. They’d landed yesterday to see what they could scrounge up from the surface and it was little more than faint suntans -- Hux’s manifesting as a sprinkling of freckles -- and a new saber burn. Kylo took to practicing his forms whenever they stopped planetside, much to Hux’s worry.

Kylo was clumsier now with his blade than he’d ever been, even as a youngling. He’d gotten bionic replacements for his missing fingers and still wielded his saber with that hand, but the response time was infinitesimally slower, and it threw him off. Still, he was improving slowly. He knew it. Hux refused to admit it on principle, as it would work against his usual stance -- _The sooner you give that up and practice shooting instead, the better off we’ll be. You’re only going to end up lopping off your good leg._ Kylo ignored this every time it came up. He was already a good shot. Not better than Hux, but no one was. When Kylo had scorched an angry line into the flesh of his half-hand on the crossguard Hux had leapt up immediately to yell at him, and demanded an end to that day’s practice and a return to space.

Here they waited while Hux made some repairs he’d been meaning to on the Falcon’s inner workings. He’d always had a knack for engineering, and he’d been a quick study with the ship. And with Kylo’s metal additions. He was always tuning the sensors, endeavoring to perfect them. Once, he’d dialed them all the way up, laughing at how Kylo jerked away from the gentlest touch on his shoulder.

_Bad? Hey, you in there, Ren?_

Kylo had squirmed, face contorted. _No, not bad exactly._

_Hm._

_Stop it, turn them back down._

At the present moment, Hux was sunken down beneath the floor panels of the Falcon, stripped to his gray undershirt and covered in grease. He reached up, pale hand appearing, palm open. “Wrench.”

Kylo concentrated on the tool where he knew it sat in the toolbox next to him.

Hux popped up, face annoyed. “Time is of the essence, Ren.”

“Oh. Yes,” Kylo retrieved the wrench and handed it over bodily, his vanished Force abilities tingling like a missing limb. Like his leg, like his fingers. Hux disappeared again, screwing a new gasket in place where the old one had failed. For months after the war was lost and they’d run together to the far reaches of Wild Space, Hux had undoubtedly been the more useful of the two of them. Hux was accustomed to reading people’s faces in lieu of their minds, and had already possessed a practiced alertness to his surroundings without relying on the Force to tell him danger was near. Kylo, in comparison, had felt disoriented until his other senses began to sharpen. Making up for the loss.

It was not a total loss, in that Kylo did feel, some nights, a slight headache in the base of his skull and a raising of the hair on his arms that told him Rey was looking in on him. Their bond yet existed, unusable to him. A one-way line -- he couldn’t see her. She was checking to make sure that he wasn’t getting into trouble, he figured. Not killing anyone who hadn’t asked for it. It had sickened him at first, being under surveillance like a troublesome child. But it was preferable to a life sentence, to losing Hux. And being angry with Rey was being angry at himself. For the first time in his life, he had tired of that. His self-loathing had been lifted away along with the power he once held.

“There,” Hux pulled himself up and rolled away to the side, overheated and sweating. He wiped his brow with his arm, leaving a gray smear on his forehead. Kylo shifted and lowered the hatch back into place above the whirring machinery. “Have we got another job yet?” Hux asked from the floor. “We’re ready to go, if so.”

“Yeah, a gig came through this morning on the comm. I said we’d take it.”

“Hutts?”

“Yeah.”

“Ugh,” Hux groaned. “I can guess, then.”

“Nerfs,” Kylo told him with a grin. “A herd of nerfs. We’ve got space, right?”

“I’d take a herd of nerfs over more Kessel spice by now, they almost got us at that Guavian checkpoint last time. I’ll never do spice again, you know. If they really wanted to crack down on it they’d just make everyone who wanted a hit sweat it out while a death gang searches their ship.” Hux stretched where he lay on the floor, throwing his arms up over his head and arching his back, and the hem of his undershirt came up, baring his white stomach with its dusting of copper hair.

Kylo crawled forward on his hands and knees to bury his face in that strip of exposed flesh, and Hux scowled at him even as one of his hands came to rest in Kylo’s hair. Kylo licked him just beside his navel, relishing the salt of his sweat.

“Don’t,” Hux groaned. “I’m filthy.”

“I like it.” Kylo worked his way up, leaving soft open-mouthed kisses up Hux’s ribs and chest, pushing his stained shirt out of the way as he went, and then skipped over the bunched fabric to kiss Hux’s jaw. Hux’s orange stubble scratched on his face pleasantly.

As if picking up on Kylo’s enjoyment of it specifically, Hux muttered, “I wish I could shave.”

“I like this too,” Kylo told him, moving up to kiss Hux’s cheek.

“You could. I don’t know that your facial hair helps. With the hiding aspect.” Hux said. It was true enough -- Kylo still possessed, in addition to a very singular face, his scar and his metal-plated cheek.

“If anyone’s recognized me, no one’s said it,” Kylo mumbled against Hux’s skin.

“Probably afraid of you. The scavenger hasn’t published the exact means of her triumph, as far as I’ve heard.”

“That’s for the best.”

“Yes, I don’t fancy falling on the mercy of the Third Republic should some backwater store clerk decide to try their hand at collecting a bounty.”

“I wouldn’t worry about store clerks. Innkeepers are the mouthy ones,” Kylo said. “Besides, the first time we botch a smuggling run the price the Hutts put on our heads will eclipse the Republic’s offer.”

Hux chuckled and finally returned Kylo’s affection, kissing him full on the mouth. This, too, had changed. They were both gentler about it. Hux kissed Kylo almost reverently, soft and open-mouthed with only the slightest graze of his teeth on Kylo’s lower lip. They kissed like that for a while, languidly, tangled on the hard durasteel floor.

Hux pulled back first, as he always had. “At least let me use the sonic.”

“No.”

“I swear you always initiate things the second I’ve become thoroughly disgusting. Is this a fetish?”

“I miss being in your head.”

“I fail to understand how this in any way makes up for that.”

“Do you miss me in your head?”

“Not in the slightest. I’m using the sonic.” Hux pushed Kylo away, moving to get up, and Kylo scooped him up before he could, carrying him over his shoulder. Hux landed a couple half-hearted blows on Kylo’s back and spat a few particularly creative curses, but let himself be man-handled down the hallway and into their bed.

They’d bolted together the two bunks in the crew’s quarters and affixed the new frame to the far wall, where an indent in the durasteel served as a makeshift nightstand littered with objects. A pack of endangered Hosnian red cigarettes, mostly full, and a pack of Naboo blues, nearly empty. Hux’s lighter -- a cheap fuel station one with a neon picture of a busty Twi’lek on it; he’d left his silver engraved one in his office in the Capitol Tower. A group of pilfered calligraphy scrolls wound up together with an errant bit of cord to keep them from rolling around. An assortment of bottles of oil (Kylo made a point to pick up a new one at every stop and Hux made a point of pretending it was of no consequence to him). A few credit chips both Imperial and Republic in origin, and scattered docking receipts that Hux had been nagging Kylo to sort through for the last two weeks.

“These sheets _were_ reasonably clean,” Hux groused as Kylo set to work divesting him of his oily clothes and throwing them aside. Once he’d uncovered every inch of Hux, Kylo pulled his own shirt over his head and wiggled out of his pants, crawling into bed and pressing himself against Hux, sighing at the feel of Hux’s skin against his. They were both hard already, Kylo grinding his erection against the side of Hux’s hip and leaving a smear of transparent precome there, and Hux resolutely ignoring his own. Kylo reached across him to grab a bottle of lube and oiled up his hand, seeing to Hux’s arousal himself. Kylo fisted Hux’s cock in his slick hand and pumped it slowly, squeezing slightly harder around the head in the way Hux liked best.

“How can I ever make it up to you?” Kylo teased.

Hux grabbed for the bottle next. “On your back, let me up.”

Kylo slid sideways on the bed and reached up behind him to pull a pillow into place beneath his head, watching with gleeful eyes as Hux positioned himself between Kylo’s thighs and oiled up his own hands and applied extra to his cock. Kylo spread his knees out and relaxed himself as he felt the first touch of Hux’s fingertips. Hux drove one in and scarcely let him adjust before adding another, fucking them as deep as they’d go. Kylo hissed at the burning intrusion.

“Tell me,” Hux said, meaning both _tell me to slow down_ and _tell me to give you more_.

“More.”

Hux scissored his fingers and then added a third, twisting them and making Kylo groan before pressing them up and against his front wall, searching for his prostate. Kylo shouted when Hux found it, arching his back involuntarily. Hux adjusted his motions, ending every thrust of his fingertips there and curving his fingers upward, applying pressure that made Kylo squirm. His other hand rested on Kylo’s thigh, occasionally coming up to ghost by his cock, but never actually making contact.

“Want you.”

“You have me.”

Kylo’s nostrils flared in irritation. “Fuck me.”

“Ah, why didn’t you say so?” Hux withdrew his fingers too quickly and Kylo’s leg shook at the motion. He felt himself clench around the sudden absence. Hux lined himself up, the head of his cock pushing bluntly against Kylo, and then he pushed in. He was always a bit stiff at first, his shoulders straightening in the way they did when he performed in some capacity, like when he gave one of his speeches. He quickly relaxed into it, most times. On nights where the rigidity in his form stayed too long, Kylo ran his hands over Hux, softening those planes of muscle with a touch. It wasn’t necessary tonight. Hux had lost the frozen edge in his spine by the time he was fully seated.

Kylo moaned low in his throat at the stretch, his cock twitching and leaking, desperate for attention. He moved to touch himself and Hux tsked at him, pulling out halfway and driving in again, this time moving forward and pushing his knees under Kylo’s thighs, angling himself up against Kylo’s prostate.

“There,” Kylo gasped, muscles tensing. “Right there, Hux--”

“I’m not an imbecile. What do you think I’m doing?”

“You’ve made your point, you don’t have to -- ah! -- keep being an ass.” Kylo moved again to touch himself and Hux batted his hand away. It would be one of those nights. “Better get to work then,” Kylo teased, earning a particularly deep thrust for that.

Hux rose to the challenge, endeavoring to hit that perfect spot with every thrust and succeeding more often than not. Words fell away into curses and wanton sounds and panted breaths, then thoughts fell away into pure sensation. There was nothing but this, and it was overwhelming in its completeness. Kylo itched again to open Hux’s mind and crawl in as he used to. Hux had once been a sanctuary from himself. Kylo was able to bear it better with each passing day, being trapped within his own head. He still missed Hux’s, but it was less like not being able to breathe now, and more like not being able to perceive the flavor or scent of a glass of wine as he drank it. Kylo felt that telltale stirring below his navel, sparks igniting in his groin, the muscles in his thighs and abs tightening. He was close. Hux was too -- Kylo could hear it in the timbre of his voice when he moaned, could feel it in the slight stutter of his hips when he pulled out, just before he thrusted in again.

“Pull out,” Kylo groaned, wanting it as much as he didn’t.

“No, this was your idea in the first place, you’ve already gotten your way,” Hux argued.

“I want to taste you.”

“You did last time.” Hux snapped his hips forward roughly, harder than before, and Kylo moaned, throwing his head back. “And the time before that, and before that. You want to be filthy? This is what you deserve,” Hux said, voice going breathy, pupils blown wide. “I’m not even going to _touch_ you, Kylo, you can finish like this or not at all,” An empty threat, they both knew, but Kylo thought that Hux looked good giving ultimatums. Hux bit back a sound then, turning it into a grunt, and came, cock pulsing, muscles tensing. His eyes fluttered and then he forced them open again, pale green gleaming in the muted light. Two chips of sea ice on a gray day, staring down at Kylo with palpable love.

And all together, that was enough. Kylo felt himself fall off the edge after Hux, and frantically reached up and pulled his face down, kissing the corner of his mouth, his aim off. He tasted salt. The reactions of his body to his orgasm seemed muted and distant. From somewhere deep in his skull, he felt the echoes of the waves he’d missed since the Force was shrouded to him. He could nearly taste Hux the way he really longed to -- to breathe in the salt spray breaking on the shore in Hux’s mind. If he’d known he’d lose that connection he’d have drowned himself in it when he had the chance.

Hux pulled out, softening, bringing Kylo back to this other connection. The one they still had. The only one Hux had ever known. Hux collapsed at Kylo’s side, shifting to lay his head on Kylo’s shoulder. The metal-plated one. Hux had fitted it, and all of Kylo's metal pieces, with matte black synth-skin months ago to soften them for just this purpose. Hux dragged his fingertips over Kylo’s stomach, through his spend, and then brought them up and smeared it over Kylo’s mouth before licking the excess from his fingers himself.

“There you go,” he said, plainly proud of himself. He probably kept a record somewhere of the times he’d made Kylo come like that, untouched. An annotated record.

Kylo licked his lips and wiped the rest away on his arm. “...Thanks,” he deadpanned.

“You’re most welcome. So, spice. Where’s the pickup?”

Kylo blinked, summoning the higher faculties of his brain function back to him. “Teth.”

Hux sniffed, absorbing that. “Dropoff?”

“Indoumodo.”

“Lovely. There’s nothing quite like insects the size of akk dogs, as I’ve always said. There won’t be Guavians, at least. I’ll put together a supply list, we might be able to acquire a few things on Teth. Toothpaste, for one.”

“More ink. There’s a temple on Teth.”

Conversation stilled and they both slipped into a state of rest. Kylo shifted, wrapping the arm under Hux around him to caress his hip, and kissed his forehead sloppily, coming away with gray oil on his mouth.

Hux wrinkled his nose at that, feeling anew the state of filth they both were in. “I hate you,” he mumbled petulantly.

“I know,” said Kylo, and they relaxed against each other to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And the end! I hate writing fight scenes, especially spaceship fight scenes, which is why I published an excerpt from this before the whole thing. I even had a scaffold for it in the DOTF script! Oh well. Also, can a hyperdrive-specific console allow Rose to disable the entire fleet? No, but shh. I did what I wanted. ( :  
> If you don't like Matt and Techie just pretend its two other nameless techs.  
> Hux is just lucky that Rey didn't know what he did to Rose yet or she would've had a harder time letting him go free. Realistically Hux and Kylo deserve death or prison but this is a "happy" no-death ending. Not so much redemption as ROTJ-style blanket forgiveness. Even Phas is still out there somewhere. Maybe she'll run into Hux and Kylo again.

**Author's Note:**

> Next (last) chapter coming soon!


End file.
